Against a wealth tax political
Other countries repealed theirs
Most countries that had a wealth tax have since scrapped it, which proves the policy fails in practice.
- 3 counters
- 8 sources
- 2 people
- 3 evidence
The counters
Repeals were about bad design The taxes that were repealed had low thresholds, leaky exemptions and poor enforcement — the failures were of design, not of the underlying idea. Migration response is small Empirical studies of existing wealth and high-income taxes find emigration responses are modest, and well-designed exit rules limit avoidance. Governments already tax wealth Most governments already run wealth taxes by other names — inheritance and estate taxes, property and transfer duties, recurring property levies — introduced with little outcry. The UK has inheritance tax, stamp duty and council tax bands; the US levies estate and property taxes; Spain, Norway and Switzerland run recurring net-wealth taxes. Taxing wealth is the norm, not a radical departure; this campaign just goes further.Copy-paste rebuttal Drop a sourced reply where this argument shows up
Reddit / long form
You're making the "Other countries repealed theirs" argument against a wealth tax. The taxes that were repealed had low thresholds, leaky exemptions and poor enforcement — the failures were of design, not of the underlying idea. The feared mass exodus didn't materialise either: empirical studies of existing wealth and high-income taxes find emigration responses are modest, and well-designed exit rules limit avoidance. And plenty of countries — including the UK — already tax wealth by other names (inheritance tax, stamp duty, council tax) without controversy. Fix the design and it works. Learn more: https://wealthtax.now/arguments/repealed-elsewhere/
X / Bluesky / short form
You're making the "Other countries repealed theirs" argument against a wealth tax. Those taxes failed by design — low thresholds, leaky exemptions — not in principle. Most countries already tax wealth by other names anyway. https://wealthtax.now/arguments/repealed-elsewhere/
Backed by
- Taking Stock of Progress on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes
Cross-border sheltering is a design problem that's already being solved. Since the Common Reporting Standard began automatically swapping bank data between countries, jurisdictions have identified about €107 billion in extra tax, interest and penalties from voluntary compliance, and in 2022 alone information was exchanged on 123 million accounts worth €12 trillion. Independent research (Boas et al., 2024) finds automatic exchange cut the offshore tax gap by roughly 70%. "They'll just hide it abroad" describes a loophole that enforcement has largely closed, not an inevitability.
- Taxation and Migration by the Super-Rich
Using UK tax records and a reform that sharply raised tax on the foreign income of the super-rich, emigration of the affected wealthy rose only temporarily — by about six percentage points from a base of roughly 5% — before reverting to its pre-reform level. Despite headlines about an "exodus of millionaires", the actual tax data showed minimal emigration, and those who stayed raised their reported income and income tax by around 50%. The capital-flight threat is far smaller than claimed.
- The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD
Recurring net-wealth taxes are an established, documented instrument: twelve OECD countries levied one in 1990, and France, Norway, Spain and Switzerland still did in 2017 — sitting alongside the inheritance, estate, transfer and recurring property taxes that nearly every member already runs. Taxing accumulated wealth is the norm, not a radical departure; "tax something else, not wealth" overlooks that governments tax wealth already.
Where it's been said
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The economist billionaires fear: this is how we get a wealth tax“A lot of the work that we've done over the last few years has been to study the historical experience with wealth taxation. In many countries like France, Germa”
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Why are the far right doing so well? And can they be stopped?Raised as a counter-argument to rebut. “And if you want to find examples of wealth taxes that are designed badly, you will find them.”
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Is a wealth tax actually possible?Raised as a counter-argument to rebut. “It was done in the 20th century. It was done in the 20th century, inequality was reduced massively and we should look at how they did that.”
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We can do it here, we've done it before“wealth taxes have been tried in a number of countries. Only Switzerland has stuck with it. ... But most countries have abandoned them”
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What's next for me and this channel?Raised as a counter-argument to rebut. “if taxing wealth is so easy, why doesn't anybody do it? And he showed that, you know, across the world, wealth taxation is quite low.”
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The City, Levelling Up & £700billion - Gary on Politics LiveRaised as a counter-argument to rebut. “all of the downsides to wealth taxes the fact that they're almost everywhere that they've been tried they've specifically”
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What is Wealth? - @conversationofmoney podcastRaised as a counter-argument to rebut. “when people say it's impossible i always say well actually we did it we did it if you study a bit of history you'll see after the second world war basically all”
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How to get paid £480million... - Gary on Times Radio with Mariella Frostrup“the vast majority of companies that have introduced wealth taxes have later abandoned them which is a pretty strong indicator that they don't work”