Governments are broke and rapacious. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
Looks like we need another $500 billion or so. Hum baby!
Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but two predictions are easy: 1) governments that do not yet impose wealth taxes will do so within the next five years and 2) governments will impose windfall taxes on all outsized unearned gains, from any source, anywhere on the planet.
Glancing at the chart of federal tax revenues, we note a steep increase–hum baby! Governments have financial commitments, and these never seem to decrease, they only increase.
It’s nothing personal, we just need more money. We have responsibilities and we made promises.
A few nations already have wealth taxes: for example, Norway, Spain and Switzerland. In Switzerland, the wealth to be taxed is self-reported, and the top rate is 1%. The Swiss wealth taxes account for 3.6% of tax revenue. It doesn’t sound like much but every little bit helps, right?
That 3.6% of tax revenues applied to the U.S. tax revenues equals a cool $108 billion. That’s a useful sum.
Self-reporting isn’t going to cut it once tax revenues are viewed as inadequate. Third-party reporting will be required so wealth can’t be under-reported, and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) already requires foreign entities to report U.S. account holders’ data.
