Millionaires at Davos Say 'Tax Us More'

Millionaires Marlene Engelhorn and Phil White joined a Davos protest calling for higher taxes on the wealthy | PHIL WHITE
BBC: A handful of wealthy attendees gathered in Davos are calling on world leaders to tackle the cost of living crisis by pushing up taxes for people like them.

They took to the streets on Sunday alongside left-wing activists to call for fairer tax systems worldwide.

Political and business leaders are at the first in-person World Economic Forum (WEF) since the pandemic began.

But criticisms are mounting over the way the wealthy have profited in the last two years.

UK millionaire Phil White said: "While the rest of the world is collapsing under the weight of an economic crisis, billionaires and world leaders meet in this private compound to discuss turning points in history.

"It's outrageous that our political leaders listen to those who have the most, know the least about the economic impact of this crisis, and many of whom pay infamously little in taxes. The only credible outcome from this conference is to tax the richest and tax us now."

Mr White, who represents a group called Patriotic Millionaires, made his money as a business consultant. He said he was joining left-wing and anti-poverty campaigners calling for change at the annual meeting of influential business people and political leaders because the current economic system was failing.

Over the past decade, a growing number of millionaires and billionaires in the US and Europe have spoken out, calling for governments to impose higher taxes, including wealth levies on the richest.

While only a small number of millionaires were in Davos to attend the protest, the campaigners have sent an open letter to all Davos delegates, signed by millionaire supporters in several countries. » | BBC | Monday, May 23, 2022

Millionaires ask to pay more tax »

Coronavirus: Disney heir and Ben & Jerry’s call for higher taxes »

Germany: The Discreet Lives of the Super-Rich | DW Documentary

The rich in Germany been never been as well-off as they are today and assets have never been so unevenly distributed. But who are they? How do they live? And what do they think of their country? A journey into the discreet world of the super-rich.

One percent of Germans own over a quarter of the country's assets, whilst half of the country’s citizens have no assets at all. But while the German media report on the growing poverty in the country on a daily basis, little is known about the super-rich. They keep a very low profile and can walk the streets unrecognized. "Manager Magazin” says there were around 200 billionaires living in Germany in 2018, and their numbers are increasing. The documentary "Top of the World" asks why rich Germans are so unwilling to talk about their wealth. Its author immerses himself in the discreet world of big money and meets financial advisors with 800 years of family tradition behind them and billionaires such as drugstore king Dirk Rossmann and mail-order company heir Michael Otto - as well as a self-made businessmen such as Rainer Schaller. They talk about their notions of money and justice, the origins of their wealth and their fear of social envy.

Why the Super-rich Love the UK
THE GUARDIAN: It's obviously not for the weather, so what is it about Britain that the obscenely wealthy find so attractive?

Here's something you definitely shouldn't do if you're even a tiny bit leftwing and suffer from high blood pressure: look at a document called the Forbes cost of living extremely well index. Forbes is an American business magazine, and it's cost of living extremely well index is an annual survey of price trends for things popular at the very, very top end of the income distribution. The riveting thing about the CLEWI isn't the headline attached, because that tends to be the same every year. The headline news is usually that very expensive things have gone up at a rate higher than the rate of inflation – often by as much as double. Common sense leads us not to be surprised at that, since people who don't care what stuff costs will logically not mind too much if the cost of that stuff goes up. What's gripping about the index – a basket of 40 goods and services targeting the super-rich – is the detail of what's on it.

In fact, that's always true for these indices. The fun is in the specifics. The UK Office for National Statistics publishes my favourite one. This measures inflation using a basket of goods in common use – a category that is constantly shifting, and at the moment includes mobile phone downloads, sparkling wine and long-sleeved cotton shirts. There is, in a wonky way, something moving about the close attention the resident stattos give to detailing the realities of ordinary lives; it's like a novel about British domestic life in 2012. Oven-ready joints of meat, for example, burst on to the index last year with this explanatory note: "Replaces pork shoulder joint reflecting a longer-term movement to prepared food and replacing an item which was sometimes difficult to collect since joints are sometimes only available towards the end of the week and on weekends." Someone has really thought hard about that. It's reassuring to contemplate a household that has managed to buy every single thing on the index, from hardback fiction to hair conditioner, from a provincial newspaper to women's high-heeled shoes to dried fruit (all those being new additions in 2011).

The super-rich index is made up of items that are, let's say, different. A Russian sable coat at $240,000, a facelift for $18,500, a thoroughbred yearling racehorse at $319,340, a Sikorsky helicopter at $14.8m, an arrangement of flowers changed weekly for six rooms at $98,100 or a year's tuition at Harvard at $56,652. It is, in a dark way, hilarious that a Harvard education counts as a luxury good. If all that starts getting too much, you can always decompress with a week at the Golden Door Spa in California, $6,750, or 45 minutes with an Upper East side shrink for $325. This, too, is like a novel, a novel about people whose lives are full of stuff you don't want to own and things you don't want to do. It's a novel, I find, that I don't particularly want to read. » | John Lanchester* | Friday, February 24, 2012

* John Lanchester's novel, Capital, is published on 1 March by Faber & Faber at £17.99. To order a copy for £14.39, including UK mainland p&p, visit the Guardian Bookshop.

Europe vs the Super-Rich
THE INDEPENDENT: The European Union will declare war today on Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra and Switzerland. Weary of losing billions of tax euros, the EU's 27-strong high command of economics and finance ministers, Ecofin, is meeting in Brussels to agree a strategy aimed at bringing the continent's tax havens under control.

Their weapon of choice will be a strengthened version of the EU's 2005 savings tax directive, which has proved pathetically easy for armies of accountants, lawyers and specialist tax planners to outflank.

Urged on by Peer Steinbruck, the German Finance Minister, the new directive will seek to close the loopholes. Mr Steinbruck says tax evasion costs Germany about €30bn (£23bn) a year in lost revenue; the UK loses a similar sum; the EU may lose €100bn (£77bn) in all.

The stakes are high. But tax experts remain sceptical about the prospects for this new offensive. Mike Warburton, senior tax partner at Grant Thornton accountants, commented yesterday that, while he and his firm condemned tax evasion, which is illegal, "tax avoidance is the second oldest profession in the world, and just as difficult to control. The tax havens will survive. There are stacks of money out there. If they close down the ones in Europe, the money will move to Dubai and Singapore". Europe vs the super-rich >>> By Sean O'Grady, Economics Editor
| Tuesday, 4 March 2008

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