"Tax us rich people. And tax us now."

On the occasion of the Davos Economic Forum, more than 200 millionaires call, in an open letter notably relayed by Oxfam France on Wednesday January 18, to tax the biggest fortunes more for “the common good”. 

“As millionaires, we know that the current tax system is not fair”, write these signatories from thirteen different countries, believing that this is at the root of the erosion of trust between the ordinary population and them. .

“While the world has been through immense suffering over the past two years, most of us can say our wealth has increased during the pandemic – but honestly few, if any, of us can say that we pay their fair share of taxes,” they note.

“To put it simply, to restore trust, you have to tax the rich. The world – and every country that takes it away – must therefore demand that the rich pay their fair share.”

Among the signatories of this letter are in particular the American actor Mark Ruffalo, the first investor of Amazon, Nick Hanauer, the American producer Abigail Disney, great niece of Walt Disney and his heiress or even Gemma McGough, British self-made-woman 40 years old, founder of the English branch of the Patriotic Millionaires association, at the origin of this call.

The wealth of the 10 richest men has doubled, while the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of COVID19.



That's a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day.



We desperately need a #WealthTax now.

pic.twitter.com/FMoOp0a7qC

— Patriotic Millionaires (@PatrioticMills) January 19, 2022

"Abolish the Billionaires"

This call comes at a time when great fortunes have soared over the past ten years and in particular during the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Oxfam, the ten richest billionaires on the planet have doubled their wealth since 2020. 

“Economic inequality has reached extreme and dangerous levels,” writes the international organization in its annual report on inequality published Tuesday, at the start of a week of exchanges of economic and political elites in Davos.

However, "the extreme concentration of wealth undermines economic growth, corrupts politicians and the media, corrodes democracy and increases polarization", writes Oxfam, adding that inequality has become "an existential threat to our societies, crippling our ability to stem poverty", and put "the future of the planet (...) in danger". 

According to the international organization which campaigns for a halving of the number of millionaires and billionaires by 2030 and then to “abolish” billionaires in the longer term, taxation thus has a “crucial” role to play.

In its report, it proposes an exceptional tax on wealth, a tax on dividends, and an increase in taxation on income from work and capital of the richest 1%. 

According to a study by the Fight Inequality Alliance, a levy of 2% per year for millionaires and 5% per year for billionaires could generate 2.520 billion dollars per year - "enough to take 2.3 billion people out of the poverty, to manufacture enough vaccines for the whole world or to provide health care and social protection to all inhabitants of low- and middle-income countries”, assures Oxfam. 

With AFP

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