Governments should open a new front in the international clampdown on tax evasion with a global minimum tax on billionaires, which could raise $250 billion annually, the EU Tax Observatory said on Monday.

If levied, the sum would be equivalent to only 2% of the nearly $13 trillion in wealth owned by the 2,700 billionaires globally, the research group hosted at the Paris School of Economics said.

Currently billionaires' effective personal tax is often far less than what other taxpayers of more modest means pay because they can park wealth in shell companies sheltering them from income tax, the group said in its 2024 Global Tax Evasion Report.

"In our view, this is difficult to justify because it risks to undermine the sustainability of tax systems and the social acceptability of taxation," the observatory's director Gabriel Zucman told journalists.

Billionaires' personal tax in the United States is estimated to be close to 0.5% and as low as zero in otherwise high-tax France, the Observatory estimated.

  • fosforus@sopuli.xyz
    62·
    1 year ago

    Yes. This is why humanity desperately needs a global government, and I'm saying that without irony. The deep problems on how to govern such a thing still exist, though. We all know how easily democracy can be corrupted, for instance, so that's clearly not the magic answer. The people who are currently powerful would actively resist such a thing, and since they're powerful, they will be successful in resisting it.

    An obvious route to such a thing would be using incredible amounts of violence against the currently powerful, and then this world government would be based on violence. Also not a good starting point.

    We could just give the reins to AI at some point? Perhaps 99% of sci-fi writers writing about this outcome are just deluded and don't know what they're imagining. I volunteer to write and operate that AI.

    • subignition@kbin.social
      7·
      1 year ago

      I appreciate this post because it has Farnsworth energy. "How can we solve this problem? Incredible violence? …No, no… That's too easy…"