▲ | bwb 12 hours ago | |
First, wealth tax doesn't work because it requires a ton of work to decide what constitutes "wealth," and then you have to carve out so much crap. The only wealth tax that currently works well is on real estate, as it doesn't move, and the state already taxes that. For example, how do you tax a private business? In Spain, for example, it is a big carve-out, which leads to people never selling a company, which hurts their economy as you have tons of zombie companies. Or what people do is they take their money and buy apartments and rent them out on Airbnb, wrap them in a business, and get around the wealth tax. The most effective way to tax wealth is to tax income, capital gains, and inheritance effectively. But, lets say you can wave a magic wand and tax wealth (France already taxes real estate with a wealth tax + property tax). What would a 2% yearly wealth tax raise? Maybe 15 to 25 billion a year in France, so it does nothing. |