2,800 billionaires in Europe: Think tank proposes minimum tax for billionaires

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This would bring in 40 billion euros a year, according to a report published on Monday by a think tank specializing in tax avoidance. Worldwide, this figure would be over 200 billion euros.

Education, health and infrastructure investments

According to the report, billionaires around the world actively pay taxes between zero percent and 0.5 percent on their assets; The reason for this is that they often use shell companies in tax havens. There are approximately 2,800 billionaires in Europe. According to the report, they only pay around 6 billion euros in taxes every year. With the proposed minimum taxation, this amount is expected to increase to 40 billion euros.

In the foreword of the report by US economist Joseph Stiglitz, it is stated that this income is “indispensable for our societies”. The government now needs to “agree on key investments in education, health, infrastructure and technologies.”

Automatic account data exchange

The report praises the automatic sharing of account data, which has been adopted by countries around the world and has been in effect since 2017. Before 2013, “most” of the rich’s money was stashed untaxed in tax havens, the report said; Ten years later, the rate is now only 25 percent.

The director of the EU Tax Observatory is French economist Gabriel Zucman. More and more rich people are now being more honest about taxes, but this is not happening voluntarily, Zucman told “Süddeutsche Zeitung” on Monday. “They were forced.”

The success of the automatic exchange of account data shows that “tax evasion is not the law of nature.” US pressure on Switzerland brought about a groundbreaking development in tax haven accounts. This led to a major international agreement.

(AFP)

Source :Blick