Member-only story
Why it’s so darn tricky to tax the rich
A global struggle
If you catch them with capital gains tax, they will pledge the assets and borrow against it. If you slap them with a wealth tax, they will take the next flight to the nearest country without one. If you tax their estate, they will create a chain of trusts to move the assets tax-free to their children.
For every action, the wealthy will come up with an equal and opposite reaction. This is not something that is unique to the United States. The entire world struggles to tax all classes of society equitably.
“France’s wealth tax contributed to the exodus of an estimated 42,000 millionaires between 2000 and 2012, among other problems. Only last year, French President Emmanuel Macron killed it.
In 1990, twelve countries in Europe had a wealth tax. Today, there are only three: Norway, Spain, and Switzerland”.
Leona Helmsley, the self-styled hotel queen, who is also known as the queen of mean, said: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes”. And it is true. Only middle and lower-income families pay taxes. For example, the true tax rate of Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Micheal Bloomberg was less than 3.27% from 2014 to 2018.
