At Davos’ World Economic Forum, a coalition of more than 150 millionaires is urging the summit’s elite participants to raise taxes on the wealthy.
In a public letter released Monday, the “Patriotic Millionaires” organization reiterated its request for the WEF participants to “acknowledge the risk of unrestrained wealth disparity throughout the world, as well as openly support initiatives to tax the wealthy.”
Actor Mark Ruffalo and billionaire Abigail Disney were among the signers of a letter calling for immediate taxation of the wealthy.
According to their letter, worldwide tax disparities have bred a climate of mistrust between the world’s poor and those in the world’s wealthiest countries and businesses.
The organization said that a “total revamp of a system that up until now has been purposely structured to make the wealthiest richer” would be necessary to regain the public’s trust.
To paraphrase the millionaires, “restoring faith involves taxing the affluent.”
They said that the WEF Davos summit did not deserve the world’s trust at this time due to the absence of “concrete benefit” that debates at past meetings had produced.
Over the weekend, a few wealthy in Davos held pro-taxation rallies.
Living expenses are out of control.
Price increases have pushed people’s living costs up worldwide, prompting this latest clamor from the affluent to raise taxes.
According to an Oxfam brief released Monday, one millionaire was created every 30 hours during the first two years of the Covid-19 outbreak. In 2022, Oxfam predicts that almost a million people will be living in severe poverty.
As Patriotic Millionaires U.K. founder Julia Davies put it, “it is as shameful that governments permit tremendous wealth to sit in the possession of a very few individuals as it is that authorities appear to be absolutely inert in dealing with the expense of living.”
A global economic crisis is not an accident but rather a result of poor economic design, Davies said.
The “race to the lowest” of corporation taxation
Oxfam Executive Director Gabriela Bucher told CNBC’s Geoff Cutmore in a session in Davos on Tuesday that last year’s international accord suggesting that firms pay nearly 15% tax on revenues didn’t go further.
Even though 136 nations signed the Organization for Development tax reform agreement & Economic Cooperation in October, it has yet to be applied.
Bucher highlighted that the poor world would have received an additional $17 billion in tax revenue if the agreed-upon rate had been raised to 25%, as suggested by tax professionals throughout the world.
Furthermore, Bucher was afraid that the present deal would lead to a “race to the bottom” for corporation tax and that nation with higher income taxes would probably lower their rates.
As a result of the rising cost of living in developed and developing nations alike, “there is a concern that we are not truly employing this vital instrument at this moment,” she added.
“You may amass as much riches as you want,” Bucher continued later, “but it does not make logical difference if everything collapses around you.”