In January, nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires from 24 countries called on global leaders to increase taxes on the super-rich, arguing that extreme wealth is polluting politics, driving social exclusion, and fueling the climate emergency.
In an open letter released to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, these influential figures—including English musician Brian Eno, Disney heirs Tim and Abigail Disney, and Italian philanthropist Veronica Marzotto—lamented that a handful of global oligarchs with extreme wealth wield outsized power over the world’s democracies and dominate the technology and innovation sectors, deepening poverty and social exclusion while accelerating the breakdown of the planet.
“Extreme wealth has led to extreme control for those who gamble with our safe future for their obscene gains. Now is the time to end that control and win back our future,” they wrote. “Millionaires like us refuse to be silent. … Tax us and make sure the next fifty years meet the promise of progress for everyone.”
Although inequality has long plagued societies, the wealth gap has risen to levels deemed unacceptable by many—and practical debates on how to tax the rich have not been so clearly defined in decades. Governments’ increasing need for fresh resources to fund green policies, defense, and digitalization are driving politicians to consider such proposals.
The debate is especially gaining traction in the United States and features prominently in political discourse in France and the United Kingdom, as local and national governments struggle to finance basic services. In the United States, state-level policymakers are increasing taxes on both income and wealth, while Europeans countries—where income taxes tend to be higher than in the United States—are focusing primarily on taxing wealth.
Global wealth and income inequality have exploded over recent decades. According to Oxfam International, which advocates for tax justice, the richest 1 percent has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet since 2015 and now has more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people.
Rich countries have rewarded high earners and corporations since the 1980s by reducing top personal income tax marginal rates, taxes on dividend income, top rates of inheritance taxes, and corporate income taxes. Nabil Ahmed, who directs economic and racial justice at Oxfam America, said inequality has also risen because governments in many wealthy countries have implemented austerity programs and pursued privatization of public goods.
In the United States, states are taking various approaches to combat inequality and raise money by taxing the uber-rich. Fourteen states face budget deficits in the next fiscal year—partly due to President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which included multiple tax cuts.
Governments can raise taxes on the rich by instituting new tax brackets for high earners, introducing levies on net worth, or increasing taxes on the income generated by wealth, such as capital gains on the sale of stocks or dividends. They can also introduce or raise taxes on inheritance.
In February, the Washington State Senate approved a “millionaires tax” proposing a 9.9 percent annual tax on personal earnings over $1 million. This should bring in $3.7 billion a year in tax proceeds for Washington state.
Similarly, Rhode Island is considering an added 3 percent surtax on incomes over $1 million, while New York City’s newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has proposed a 2 percent tax increase on millionaire earners, which would bring the top combined city and state tax rate for New York City residents to 16.8 percent. (Adding in federal taxes, the top rate would be 52.5 to 53.8 percent, according to the Cato Institute.)
In California, officials are proposing to tax wealth instead of income. The Billionaire Tax Act, which will be on California’s general election ballot in November, would levy a one-time 5 percent tax on residents with a net worth over $1 billion, raising more than $100 billion according to estimates by proponents of the bill.
Supporters of higher taxes for the rich in the United States often cite Massachusetts as an example of success, where the 2022 Fair Share Amendment added a 4 percent surtax for those making more than $1 million in income. The tax generated nearly $3 billion in annual revenue in its second fiscal year.
Yet while many states are increasing tax-the-rich policies, proposals at the federal level—such as one recently tabled by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna in early March—have so far struggled to gain enough support in Congress.
Across the Atlantic, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland have already opted to collect a wealth tax on high-net-worth individuals. Similar debates are ongoing in France, where a wealth tax proposal was recently rejected in the National Assembly. In the U.K., the British government has opted to target investment-based income—which is disproportionately held by the wealthiest segment of the population—by increasing tax rates on property, savings, and dividend income in 2026 and 2027. The government estimates that by 2030, around two-thirds of the revenue from these increases will come from the top 20 percent of households.
In 2024, a report commissioned by Brazil’s G-20 presidency proposed greater international cooperation to tax ultra-rich individuals. The idea echoes a 2021 agreement, backed by the G-20, in which more than 130 countries and territories committed to a global minimum 15 percent tax for large multinational corporations.
According to the baseline proposal, written by French economist Gabriel Zucman, individuals with more than $1 billion in total assets would be required to pay a minimum annual tax equal to 2 percent of their wealth. The tax would function as a top-up mechanism; billionaires would pay such amounts only if they did not already pay the equivalent in income tax.
This could raise $200 billion-$250 billion per year globally from about 3,000 individuals, according to Zucman, while extending the tax to those with a net worth over $100 million would raise an additional $100 billion-$140 billion per year. The proposal inspired ongoing campaigns in Brazil, France, South Africa, and the U.K.
In a 2024 report, the International Monetary Fund lent institutional weight to the debate, concluding that taxes on capital income could be strengthened in many countries by eliminating tax avoidance loopholes. It also found that, depending on the country, wealth taxes could complement capital income taxes and that taxing capital transfers through gifts or inheritance could provide another route to address wealth inequality.
Yet despite the increased popularity of such proposals, opposition to raising taxes on high earners remains strong. The most common argument against higher taxes on the wealthy—whether on income or assets—is that affluent individuals would relocate to more tax-friendly jurisdictions, eroding the tax base and further aggravating the issues legislators are striving to solve. Their flight, critics argue, could deprive economies of the very people with the resources to fund investment and ultimately contribute to higher productivity.
In the United States, California’s proposed tax increases have reportedly pushed some high-net-worth individuals, such as Google co-founder Larry Page and White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sacks, to move to Florida and Texas, respectively.
In France, around 60,000 millionaires left the country between 2000 and 2017, the Financial Times reported. This trend may have been due in part to a tax on assets above roughly $1.5 million that remained in place, with some interruptions, from 1982 until 2018, when newly elected President Emmanuel Macron repealed the policy. Still, that hasn’t deterred recent renewed efforts by the center-left Socialist Party to introduce a flagship wealth tax.
For years, however, even many left-leaning governments have hesitated to advance such policies. Riccardo Staglianò, an Italian journalist and the author of Tax the Millionaires, said that after the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, many left-wing parties absorbed the low-tax ethos of the 1980s and hesitated to increase wealth taxes while in power. In some countries—Italy, for instance—this is still the case. Nevertheless, rising inequality and fiscal needs are pushing the idea back onto the left’s agenda.
Ultimately, taxing entrepreneurs is unlikely to fundamentally change their behaviors, according to Phil White, a retired British entrepreneur, member of the organization Patriotic Millionaires UK, and signatory of the appeal sent to world leaders at Davos. “Some people will leave to avoid taxes, but most of them are rooted in the country they live in and will remain,” he said.
According to some research, fears of a wealthy exodus may be exaggerated. Family ties, children’s school systems, business networks, and the bureaucratic hurdles of establishing residency elsewhere can make high earners less mobile than often assumed.
Other skeptics argue that raising taxes on the wealthy would reduce private investment. But the revenue could also enable greater public investment, turning the debate into a question of whether public or private spending produces better economic and social outcomes, according to White.
Staglianò acknowledged that, according to several social psychology studies, poorer individuals aren’t always inclined to embrace higher taxes for the rich, as some of them tend to primarily blame themselves for their substandard economic situation instead of external factors such as unfair taxation.
“However, there’s no single rational argument not to support some form of wealth tax—in their daily life, the ultra-rich wouldn’t even realize it!” Staglianò said. “Societies haven’t been so unequal since the French Revolution. The moment has arrived.”
As heated global debates abound and proposals to tax the rich gain momentum, it is increasingly likely that these policies—in various forms—will become part of the tax codes in more countries. The jury is out, however, on whether politicians will be proved right in pursuing them.
