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'Tax us now!' — The millionaires wanting to pay wealth taxes

March 18, 2024

"Tax us now!" That’s the call from many millionaires and billionaires around the world. In open letters, they warn of the dangers posed by the growing gap between rich and poor, calling on their respective governments to tax their wealth.

https://p.dw.com/p/4drV9

A wealth tax would not just be fair, they say, it would also make it possible to reduce the extreme inequality in society and finance public services such as healthcare, and education, and expand public infrastructure.

We meet five multi-millionaires who have for years advocated a tax on extreme wealth. "The public wants it. We want it. Now all that's missing is the political will to deliver it," say British multimillionaires Julia Davies and Phil White. Danish multimillionaire Djaffar Shalchi agrees, telling his government that millionaires would be "a big part of the solution."

But Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn says there’s a lack of political will and courage to take a stand against the super-rich and implement a wealth tax. German multimillionaire Sebastian Klein says: "It is unacceptable that labor is heavily taxed while wealth is not taxed at all." He’s currently in the process of transferring 90% of his wealth to a non-profit company so that it can be used for the benefit of society.

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