This seems to ignore the fundamental reason that billionaires don't pay taxes. It's not that governments don't try to tax billionaires. It's that they're able to avoid claiming income when they make money. But following this reasoning, they would likely develop ways to avoid claiming wealth as well. Consider, for example, Warren Buffet's own example of his California properties which have a taxable value well below their realistic market value. Similar sleight of hand would likely be employed (with a few strategically positioned lobbyists having lunch with legislative committees) in order to allow billionaires to minimize their taxable wealth.<p>The more practical approach, as I understand it, is a tax on securitization of assets: whenever someone takes out a loan against an asset for expenses (which is common among the wealthy to avoid realizing gains), a tax is assessed on the loan value. This makes the tax harder to avoid because it is assessed closer to the actual use of money, which is a documented event. While this may affect the second mortgage and "auto loan" industry, weakening predatory finance doesn't seem like that much of a bad thing.
Let's first change the law to not let them borrow against their unrealized assets tax free. In fact the tax to get a loan should be higher then if you sold your shares at a company to discourage this crap. Or limit the total amount or forbid it outright.
The most scary aspect of unfettered accumulation of wealth would obviously be the consolidation of power. We're already seeing countries where the wealthiest citizens are saying <i>"Screw this, I'll just move elsewhere, unless you fix those [tax] laws"</i> - and the more powerful these people are, the easier it is to strong-arm politicians. Growth for the sake of growth, and all that.
I think we need to start treating extreme wealth hoarding as a mental illness. If someone has a net worth of more than a $billion for an appreciable amount of time, then they should be locked up to protect the world from their malfeasance and prevent them exploiting yet more people. A possible exception would be when someone inherits a vast fortune, and maybe they should be allowed some time to demonstrate that they are giving away wealth, though obviously a billion dollars is such an obscene amount of money that giving it away is going to take years.
It's funny to me the number of people who agree that billionaires should have a significant amount of their money taken from them, but then hem and haw about exactly how we should take their money from them. "We have to make up rules to take the money, otherwise it's unfair!"<p>I get that otherwise we're kinda just as bad as China, but so many of our laws and tax codes have become so toothless to billionaires without some kind of major legislative reset. And I don't see that happening on its own.
Posted the whole report earlier today: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37981730">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37981730</a><p>It is actually an interesting report. here's a TL;DR:<p>- The objectives and scope of the report: The report aims to address the questions of global tax evasion and the effects of recent policies, using new data and research conducted by the EU Tax Observatory and its partners. The report focuses on the issues of international tax evasion and competition by multinational companies and wealthy individuals, and their consequences for government revenue, inequality, and globalization.<p>- The main findings of the report: The report establishes six new findings on the dynamic of global tax evasion and international tax competition, such as the reduction of offshore tax evasion by wealthy individuals, the persistence of profit shifting by multinationals, the weakening of the global minimum tax, the emergence of new forms of tax competition, the low effective tax rates of billionaires, and the revenue potential of a global minimum tax on billionaires.<p>- The recommendations of the report: The report makes six recommendations to address the issues identified in the report, such as reforming the global minimum corporate tax, introducing a new global minimum tax for billionaires, taxing wealthy emigrants, implementing unilateral measures to collect tax deficits, creating a global asset registry, and strengthening anti-abuse rules.<p>- The role and vision of the EU Tax Observatory: The EU Tax Observatory is a research laboratory hosted at the Paris School of Economics that conducts research on taxation with a focus on international tax issues. Its goal is to generate new knowledge, formulate proposals, and contribute to a more informed democratic debate. It also aims to become an IPCC for taxation, providing rigorous and global analysis of different policy options.
The <i>moral</i> reason to tax wealth is because gross (and accelerating) inequity is unfair. We're way past the era of the landed gentry extracting rents from the poors. Err, I mean we should be.<p>The <i>practical</i> reason to tax wealth is to keep the money moving. Idle capital (hoarding) is its own special badness.<p>Keep the money moving. Either the wealthy spend their money (R&D, philanthropy, building cool new stuff, ice cream for all) or the people will spend it for them.
Taxation does not equal better quality of life for citizens. The only ones proposing this myth are the ones who need more revenue to justify the obscene amounts of debt they leverage with it - and, that's governments.
Government economists say the government needs more tax money. Very convincing.<p>Instead of making people dependent on social welfare systems, and funneling money to useless bureaucracies, how about we force the billionaires to put that money to use in the markets? Not just stocks and bonds. Most certainly not NGOs/non-profits (they siphon enough public money). Venture capital, urban renewal projects, interests that promote science + discovery.