Untaxed Wealth of Richest 0.1% Is More Than Assets of World’s Poorest Half (commondreams.org)

by ZunarJ5 15 comments 35 points
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15 comments

[−] bdcravens 43d ago
I know you had to edit the title for length, but I think it would have made more sense to lose the first part and keep the factual part of the title intact, as it's pretty hard to make grammatical sense out of it as edited

"Untaxed Wealth of Richest 0.1% Is More Than Assets of World’s Poorest Half"

[−] ZunarJ5 43d ago
Fixed, my tired brain says thanks.
[−] what 43d ago
We don’t have wealth taxes, only income taxes. So all wealth is untaxed.
[−] pragmatic 42d ago
What is property tax?
[−] dd8601fn 42d ago
Rent.
[−] bigbadfeline 42d ago
Then income tax is rent too. In fact both are taxes, the rest is meaningless rewording.
[−] reese_john 43d ago
With CRS and FATCA, no one is hiding their wealth just by having offshore assets.

Owning offshore assets also doesn’t automatically exempt you from paying taxes, since your tax liability is mostly determined by your tax residency.

  Just a fraction of that money could end extreme hunger and provide clean water to everyone on Earth.
Clickbait article
[−] Arnt 42d ago
I'm one of that 0.1%, since my yearly salary is more than about USD90k. And my attached wealth is the most typical kind, too: my wife and I bought a place to live, which we haven't sold in the 20+ years since moving in. It probably could be sold for a fair bit more than we paid: untaxed wealth.

I suspect that we won't pay 100% tax on whatever we earn when we sell, if we sell, but if we were taxed 100% I'm sure something nice could be done with that money.

I'm quite impressed by the rhetorical skill here. It's easy to overlook that what they're saying is "by taxing something/someone 100%, it would be possible to...", ie. "If pigs would fly, it would be possible to..." and making it easy to overlook that takes real skill.

[−] pjjpo 42d ago
The article focuses on offshore accounts but as far as I know, buy - borrow - die doesn't require offshore accounts.
[−] flexagoon 43d ago
"Richest 0.1%" is not some ultra wealthy billionaire class. Making $90k/year in the US already puts you in the 0.1% of richest people worldwide by income. I assume a fair share of the audience here makes this much.

https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i

Don't know what the data is for net worth, but given that the vast majority of people worldwide barely live paycheck to paycheck, I assume even a small amount of savings puts you in a very high percentile.