Argentina wealth tax
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-55199058
“One of the law’s authors said it would only affect about 0.8% of taxpayers. Those affected will pay a progressive rate of up to 3.5% on wealth in Argentina and up to 5.25% on that outside the country….Centre-left President Alberto Fernandez’s government hopes to raise 300 billion pesos.”
Interesting use of state power, and an old fashioned one, treating the bourgeoisie as a honeypot to be raided by state power from time to time, it will cheer left nationalists worldwide, as the threat of a good example.
In practical terms, it is a good idea, whilst the wealthy can avoid standing taxation, surgical raids like this can work (I imagine it would be quite easy to target and find the people who will be eligible to pay). Yes, they could start to move their money off shore, but the risk then is other jurisdictions might copy the move from time to time.
Imagine if St. Kitts decided to simply impose a wealth tax on all holdings in bank accounts there or of businesses registered there. Now, it would cease to be a tax haven, but as a one off it would be genius. Bigger countries, productive countries would find the trick easier to repeat.
Their only safety would be to pay the Dane and pay a long term tax rate that might mute calls to expropriate them.
This used to be called a “capital levy” and was proposed, even by some capitalists and supporters of capitalism, as a way of paying off a part of the extra National Debt incurred to fight the First World War. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone here in Britain will or perhaps already has proposed this as a way to pay off the extra debt incurred to deal with the pandemic. Any takers, Labour reformists, or would that be too Corbynist?
Anyway, this is what we had to say about it at the time:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-capital-levy-1924.html
In Argentina it is called a Tricky tax because it does not affect the whole capitalist class, it affects some individuals, but it does not affect the large corporations and banks. The money is going to be used to pay for the economical and financial crisis of Argentina, and to pay the national debt. Poverty, insecurity, high inflation and unemployment will continue
UK government has been urged to launch a one-off wealth tax on millionaire households to raise up to £260bn in response to the coronavirus pandemic, as the crisis damages Britain’s public finances and exacerbates inequality.
The Wealth Tax Commission – a group of leading tax experts and economists brought together by the London School of Economics and Warwick University to examine the case for a levy on assets – said targeting the richest in society would be the fairest and most efficient way to raise taxes in response to the pandemic.
Economic cost of Covid crisis prompts call for one-off UK wealth tax | Business | The Guardian
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