Every wealth tax meets the same objections. Each one is put here the way people raise it, then answered on a page of its own, with the figures, the laws and the court rulings behind the answer. Every number carries a source you can open.
01 · Why tax wealth Draft
Each tax we have reaches one slice of a fortune, and the largest fortunes are held in companies that sit outside most of them. A wealth tax is the one tax charged on the holding itself, every year.
Start here: read the answer →02 · Europe repealed it Draft
Governments found loopholes in their wealth taxes and scrapped the taxes instead of closing the loopholes. The repeals cost billions and left the loopholes in place.
Read the answer →03 · They will leave Draft
Some people move, and the count is small. A tax that follows leavers out the door and keeps collecting makes the threat empty, and a rich person who stays and pays nothing was never an asset.
Read the answer →04 · You cannot value it Draft
Banks report deposits and holdings, a company can value its own shares for its owner, and a tax on a few hundred or a few thousand households can be audited one by one. Nobody prices the socks.
Read the answer →05 · No cash Draft
Every other tax gets paid by people whose wealth isn't in cash. A pensioner borrows, sells or defers. The largest fortunes can do the same, and Norway already lets owners spread the bill over years.
Read the answer →06 · Double taxation Draft
A wage is taxed when it's earned, again when it's spent, and the home it buys is taxed every year. The largest fortunes grow as company profit that is kept and gains that aren't sold, so much of it has never been taxed once.
Read the answer →07 · We already tax property Draft
Each of those taxes has a different base and timing. A property tax reaches homes, a gains tax reaches sales, an inheritance tax reaches death. None reaches the private company shares where the largest fortunes sit.
Read the answer →08 · Family firms Draft
The threshold decides who pays, and a firm that owes 1% of its value a year is paying a fifth of a normal return. Firms in Norway didn't go bust more often. What threatens a tax's base is exemptions, so don't write them in.
Read the answer →09 · It will spread Draft
Thresholds are written into the law, and the record shows them rising. Where a tax does reach many people, as in Norway, most pay small sums. And a household with millions can afford a tax, so reaching it is the point.
Read the answer →10 · Not enough Draft
Enough for what? Projected yields run from 0.4% to about 1% of GDP, and the taxes in force raise 0.2% to 1.0%. The other job is to slow the compounding of the largest fortunes, and that takes a rate near the gap between how fast they grow and how fast the economy does.
Read the answer →11 · Hurts growth Draft
In the studies, a one point higher top rate cuts investment by 0.07% and output by 0.10%. The tax slows how fast the largest fortunes pile up, which is its point, and what the money buys returns more than it costs. Growth of what, and for whom, is the real question.
Read the answer →12 · Unconstitutional Draft
No court has struck down a wealth tax as such. Germany's court demanded equal valuation, France's and Spain's courts upheld theirs, and Colombia's declined to rule. Where a constitution blocks a design, countries amend it, change the design or move the tax to another level.
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