How Spain put up wealth taxes - without chasing away the billionaires
How Spain put up wealth taxes - without chasing away the billionaires
www.theguardian.com
How Spain put up wealth taxes – without chasing away the billionaires
40 comments
-
-
Because billionaires fleeing or stop investing after taxing them is mostly a myth. Warren Buffet even argued this. And even if they are serious about fleeing, impose a capital flight tax like Norway did to deter the rich from fleeing with their wealth.
-
It's always been such an absurd argument. This whole notion of if a billionaire can't make ten million dollars he won't bother to make to eight, as if everything we know about billionaires doesn't tell us that they will scramble, strive, and devastate the world for every little nickel.
-
-
You just start taxing them.
If they leave then seize their properties and redistribute them, then real workers can utilize those assets and wealth.
-
I'm all for chasing them away.
If taxation is what they won't accept, They always saw your nation as something to be exploited and sucked dry, which means they were never on your society's side, which with such resources makes them incalculably dangerous.
If they fail the taxation test, the nation should be relieved when they run away.
-
Yeah but when we chase them away, let's make sure their fortune stays here so that the government can use it for gooe purposes like cycling infrastructure
-
I wish we could get such policies. At the very least there should be codes that wealthy people that leave to avoid taxes will be barred from doing any business in the US, which should extend to global partners that choose to do business with them if they then wish to expand to the US, nope you partnered with asshole McGee after they ran away so fuck off. It could be done, it would just require the agents and resources to do so.
But just as our elected officials won't vote against their own interests, they will defend the interests of the robber barons that pay their real salary in bribes, which is effectively legal post citizens united, so nothing can change under the current system, a new one would need to be made in its place.
-
-
-
Just like gun laws, this cannot possibly work in the US. Won't try it, won't condone it, won't consider the evidence. Will cover ears and sing loudly whilst looking away.
-
Anyone who thinks that "chasing away billionaires" is even a thing that can happen needs to read The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight by Cristobal Young, by far the most extensive actual study on the subject.
-
A not amazon link for anyone in the States: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-myth-of-millionaire-tax-flight-how-place-still-matters-for-the-rich_cristobal-young/13944366/
-
It makes sense intuitively. By the time you become a billionaire, you can live wherever you want and have any kind of lifestyle you desire. Billionaires living in Spain live in Spain because they want to live in Spain. And all wealth past a certain point is meaningless, just a number for bragging rights. Whether someone has $10 billion or $7 billion makes zero difference in their actual lifestyle or quality of life. If you're already in a country you're happy with, why leave for a tax that has absolutely no impact on your quality of life?
-
This is exactly what Young's research shows; generally, when the wealthy move, they move to places with good quality of life. Tax brackets don't really factor into it. Often raising taxes on the wealthy actually increases the attractiveness of a region because the wealthy want to live in places with low crime rates, good infrastructure, that sort of thing. And a well funded government has more capacity to create those things.
-
-
I just tried finding it on Amazon. I got an error when opening it.
-
Don't buy from the blue devourer when you don't have to: https://www.sup.org/books/sociology/myth-millionaire-tax-flight
-
This link is working fine for me: https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Millionaire-Tax-Flight-Inequality/dp/1503603806/
-
-
Like this one?
In 2024, approximately 7,500 millionaires left the UK, a figure that was already cause for concern among UK policymakers. However, in 2025, this number has more than doubled to a record 16,500, marking the steepest annual increase of HNWI net outflows on record.
-
That will be in large part because of the changes to the non-dom tax rules, where (broadly speaking) you could live in the UK, but opt out of the UK's tax system and pay tax somewhere else where there wasn't any tax. The people who left will largely be people who weren't paying a meaningful amount of tax anyway.
-
-
-
Oh NO! We DEFINITELY do NOT want to Scare Away the people who are NOT paying Taxes!
-
We wouldn't want to risk losing a small amount of tax revenue by taking a significantly larger amount of tax revenue.
-
Will somebody not think of the poor millionaires!!!
-
-
This is good shit:
Ortega is poised to receive a record dividend of €3.1bn (£2.7bn) this year from his shares in Zara’s parent group, Inditex. He is reportedly racing to spend the windfall, which would otherwise be subject to wealth taxes. Sources close to Pontegadea told the Guardian it was not investing to avoid tax, but following its mandate “to create wealth from the original assets, maintain it, make it grow, and consolidate it over generations”.
...
What is clear is that, two years on, a predicted exodus of the rich, trumpeted in endless alarmist headlines, has not materialised. Forbes counted 26 Spanish billionaires in 2021. This year, it lists 34, with a combined net worth comfortably over $200bn.
...
So far, there is no sign that it has affected growth. Spain was the world’s fastest-expanding major advanced economy last year, outpacing even the US, with GDP up 3.2%. By contrast, growth in the UK and France last year barely scraped above 1%. On the balconies of the Planeta building, and in the country at large, the green shoots are alive and well.
-
I mean, I'm not really understanding how this is a win "for the people". As per the article, the tax itself is quite small, and there is a loophole allowing them to not be taxed on real estate investments. So they are just shifting their wealth to real estate.
-
40 comments
Let’s take over critical infrastructure and give it to the people .