Sigh... Wealth taxes don't work. Almost every single European country that had a wealth tax repealed theirs. The fact that Senator Warren is continuing to try to push a wealth tax shows how poor her policies are.
Finland: Discontinued
Luxembourg: Discontinued
Sweden: Discontinued
France: Discontinued*
Spain: Current
Netherlands: Current
Norway: Current
Switzerland: Current
Italy: Current, but excludes assets held within the country
Belgium: Current
So 5 discontinued & 6 current? That doesn't seem like "Almost every single"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax#Current_examples
Do you have a better source for what countries had it an discontinued it? For what it's worth I am here considering Financial property exclusively, France still has it's property tax which can be considered a wealth tax.
I am struggling to find write ups that don't just echo "they all repealed it" but list the specific countries.
> In 1990, about a dozen European countries had a wealth tax, but by 2019, all but four had eliminated the tax because of the difficulties and costs associated with both design and enforcement. Belgium, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland are the countries that raised revenue from net wealth taxes on individuals in 2019 with net wealth taxes accounting for 1.1% of overall tax revenues in Norway, 0.55% in Spain, and 3.6% in Switzerland for 2017.
The citation for those statements links back to the OECD, so they apparently don't count the Italian and Dutch taxes as "wealth taxes". The NPR transcript linked elsewhere says only three countries have it, so that interviewee may not be counting Belgium either (since the tax is solely on financial instruments and not total wealth).
In fairness, the "old" wealth tax did not bring a lot of revenue.
The exact amount varies between regions.
Wealthy regions like Madrid have abolished it. Non coincidentally, the regions that are economically doing better, and more contributing, per capita, to the central State.
https://www.businessinsider.es/impuesto-patrimonio-son-difer...
An article in Spanish
https://www.elindependiente.com/economia/2021/04/25/madrid-d...
Another one
https://www.libremercado.com/2021-08-03/el-efecto-laffer-de-...
En concreto, la región de Díaz Ayuso recibió de la caja común apenas el 23% de lo que ingresó en 2019.
Meaning that Madrid out of the 100% taxes it collects for the State, only 23% end up in Madrid. But that's still fine, because of the higher economic activity.
Madrid has been accused of "tax dumping", by having way lower taxes than other regions, and still:
Tanto es así, que Madrid aporta en torno al 68% del sistema de solidaridad interterritorial (más de 4.000 millones) frente al 25,5% de Cataluña o el 6,6% de Baleares.
Meaning that, even with low taxes, Madrid funds 68% (+4 billion Euro) of the inter-region fund system.
A wealth tax on land (an LVT) is literally impossible to avoid however since you can't move the land.
Yeah, those are called property taxes and already exist.
I'm also curious what you think a sound tax policy would look like as an alternative to what Warren is proposing.
> ROSALSKY: In 1990, there were 12 countries in Europe that had a wealth tax. Today there are only three. Perret says they didn't work for a lot of reasons. Among other things, it costs a lot to enforce. It pushed rich people out of the country, and the wealth taxes didn't raise a lot of revenue.
But
> ROSALSKY: But Warren says that her proposal, which has no exemptions, will play out differently in the United States. Greg Rosalsky, NPR News.
Unfortunately, nothing in her proposal justifies that. Why can't companies and people just move out of the US to avoid this? Singapore or other countries will readily welcome them.
In France at least, it has been a topic of political debate for decades before the recent abolition and what's clear at this point is that it costed much less than what it brought (both in terms of law enforcement, and in terms of rich people moving out of the country).
> Unfortunately, nothing in her proposal justifies that. Why can't companies and people just move out of the US to avoid this?
A wealth tax isn't a tax on a company, it's a tax on the owner of the company so moving the company won't help here. And the owner leaving the US won't help either, since they will still have to pay taxes as long as they remain a US citizen. Renouncing to US citizenship would still be an option of course, but I'd expect the opportunity cost would be much higher than the cost of the tax itself.
Why? In 2021, a lot of countries have US levels or better infrastructure. The owner can reside outside the US and still make products for the US and the world.
> Americans Gave Up Citizenship in Record Numbers in 2020, Up Triple From 2019, Reports Tax Specialists Americans Overseas
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americans-gave-up-c...
Meanwhile the ultra rich are getting ultra richer and the rest is getting poorer.
So lets globally coordinated tax the rich for a while in a way that they can not evade their net wealth to some other country and lets see how well that works.
Do you have more info on this? The middle class literally paid less in taxes due to Trump's cuts[1]. The rates were lowered across the board and the standard deduction (negligible to the 1%, a huge chunk of change to the middle class) was increased.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-27/the-trump...
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2019/09...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trum...
https://www.salon.com/2020/12/27/50-year-study-of-tax-cuts-o...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/trumps-tax-cuts...
What is important is how much a person is paying as a function of how rich they are. Rich people get to pay way less and it's not fair. They can get around tax laws because their cash flows don't look like the average citizen's tax flows.
More seriously though, issues like wealth taxation, capital gains taxation, inheritance taxes etc. are I would say more of a reflection of the relative strength of large property owners (a.k.a. "Capitalists" or "The 1%" to use other colloquial terms) versus the rest of the populace, to set economic-cultural norms and influence legislation.
Certainly, if such a tax is put in effect, many of the wealthy would make an effort to hide their assets away, possibly even abroad. But if the (federal) state wanted to cope with or overcome this potential tendency - which it really does not in the ultra-bought-off US political system, including Ms. Warren - there are many ways it could do so, both on the national and international levels. Not to mention how US corporations already employ asset and activity off-shoring to evade taxation.