A group of more than 100 billionaires and millionaires has issued a plea to the world's economic forum to make more tax.
The Patriotic Millionaires group said that the ultra-wealthy were not currently being forced to pay their share of the global economic recovery from the Pandemic.
As millionaires, we know that the current tax system is not fair. Most of us can say that the world has gone through an immense amount of suffering over the last two years, but we have actually seen our wealth rise during the epidemic - yet few of us can honestly say that we pay our fair share in taxes, the signatories said in an open letter published on the occasion of the World Economic Forum's virtual davos on January 17.
In the last year, Reuters reported on the rise in billionaires' wealth in 2020, as the world went into a lock-down and the world economy faced its worst recession since World War Two, prompting the millionaires' group to call for higher taxes.
The millionaires said that the wealthy still needed to contribute more, as it spurred more than 130 countries to agree a minimum tax rate of 15%, which will make it harder for them to avoid taxation.
The fortunes of the world's 10 richest people have gone up over the course of the two years of the epidemic - or by $15,000 a second - according to a study by Oxfam this week.
The signatories, including Disney heiress Abigail Disney and Venture Capitalist Nick Hanauer, told Davos participants that they were not going to find the answer in a private forum. A spokeswoman for the World Economic Forum said paying a fair share of taxes was one of the forum's tenets, and a wealth tax could be a good model to deploy elsewhere, as it exists in Switzerland, where the organisation is based.
In most countries outside Europe and some recent joiners in South America, the rich do not have to pay annual taxes on assets, such as real estate, stocks or artwork, because they are taxed only when the asset is sold.
According to a study conducted by the Patriotic Millionaires and Oxfam, a progressive wealth tax starting at 2% for those with more than $5 million and rising to 5% for billionaires could raise $2.52 trillion, enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty and guarantee healthcare and social protection for people living in lower income countries.
In 2021 the World Bank published a article urging countries to consider a wealth tax to help reduce inequality, replenish state coffers that are depleted by COVID 19 relief schemes and regain social trust.
Since the start of the epidemic, no new wealth tax schemes have been initiated outside of Argentina and Colombia.