Millionaires in the US want to pay higher taxes. Yesterday they published an open letter calling for "immediate" and "permanent" taxes on them. The reason? They claim it will help revive the economy after the coronavirus pandemic. Millionaires want to pay more "As Covid-19 attacks globally, millionaires like us have an essential role to play to heal the world," - the 83 authors of the letter write collectively. They include well-known businessmen such as Ben & Jerry's co-founder and British filmmaker Richard Curtis. They claim that in order to get out of the crisis "we need money and we will need it in the years to come". They are also of the opinion that overcoming the recession could "take decades" and put "half a billion people into poverty". "The problems caused and exposed by Covid-19 cannot be solved by charity, no matter how generous. Heads of government must take responsibility for raising funds by permanently raising taxes on the planet's wealthiest people like us (...) with which we must adequately fund our health care systems, schools and security." - they add. Cynical millionaires? Recently, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced that the global decline in GDP this year will be at least 6 percent, but if there is a second wave of the epidemic - as much as 7.6 percent. So maybe imposing more taxes on millionaires makes sense? Already a year ago, a group of American billionaires, led by George Soros, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, heir to the fortune of the founders of the Hyatt hotel chain and the Disney media empire, published a similar open letter in which they called for the introduction of a tax on fortunes such as theirs. Calls for increased taxes on billionaires have been made for years by famed investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. On the surface it sounds beautiful and noble. But the reality is different. For example, the band of rock millionaires U2 is famous for promoting the idea of charity, but as a company it benefited from tax breaks in Ireland for years. Bruce Springsteen operates in a similar way. The US bard also called for the introduction of higher tax thresholds, but it eventually turned out that these would not necessarily affect his own wealth. The nonsense of such ideas is also pointed out by free-market columnists, who note that raising taxes for higher earners actually hits the middle class and does not reduce the wealth of billionaires, as they use numerous legal tricks that help them avoid tax increases. However, the introduction of higher taxes may turn out to be good for cryptocurrencies. It is possible that some people will start running into BTC to somehow hide their savings or multiply them thanks to the rate increases. Tags Bill Gates millionaires taxes Warren Buffet
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