Tax the rich!

Whenever people make the perfectly sensible suggestion that the world could solve its problems by taxing billionaires, the latter's stooges flood the zone with claims it would never work. Apparently billionaires are so inherently criminal that they would evade such taxes, laundering their money and hiding it in criminal jurisdictions to avoid paying their fair share. But a new report for the G20 suggests that these concerns are massively overstated:

An international scheme to tax the wealth of the world’s 3,000 billionaires is technically feasible and could net up to $250bn (£197bn) a year in extra revenue, a new report says.

A study by the French economist Gabriel Zucman concluded that progress in finding ways to tax multinational corporations meant it was now possible to levy a global tax on individuals – even if not every country agreed to take part.

[...]

Zucman said valuing the wealth of billionaires would be relatively simple because most of it was held in the form of shares. His report said it could be enforced successfully even if all countries did not adopt it, by strengthening current exit taxes (levies on rich people taking their money to a non-participating jurisdiction) and implementing “tax collector of last resort”.

This would involve extending to individuals rules that allow participating countries to tax non-participating countries’ undertaxed multinationals.

So, its doable, would solve our problems, and punish the billionaires who are responsible for destroying the world. We should do it already.