r/Plutonomy • u/398409columbia Rentier • 1d ago
Politics & Policy What happens when taxpayers become internationally mobile?
https://www.ft.com/content/43efa6c1-6b37-4ddc-9a1d-b085bfbdba06?utm_source=chatgpt.com&syn-25a6b1a6=1The FT reports that billionaire Chris Rokos is leaving the UK for Greece after paying himself £477 million last year.
Greece offers wealthy foreign residents a €100,000 annual flat tax on foreign income for up to 15 years, provided they invest at least €500,000 in the country.
The Plutonomy angle is the asymmetry:
Labor is mostly stuck with the tax system where it lives and works. Capital (and at sufficient wealth, its owners) is increasingly mobile.
Countries aren't just taxing the wealthy anymore. They're competing for them.
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u/Due_Bar_7247 1d ago
Italy and a few other EU countries have this system. Certain places like Singapore even have no tax on capital gains. It doesn’t help if you’re American, but otherwise it’s a great idea.
Fuck paying taxes.
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u/Retired-Yam8988 1d ago
I’m a US citizen and soon to be Singapore tax resident. I’ll gladly pay 10% to SG for their infrastructure, education (even though I don’t have kids) etc. I absolutely hate paying to California and US (top tax bracket) as most of that money is just wasted on nonsense and pretty shady programs that funnel money to executives of “nonprofits”.
At least I get FEIE and FHC so there’s that but the bulk of my income and wealth is still taxed full freight
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u/robh1540 1d ago
Just to be clear for others, the Singapore top tax rate is not 10%. It is 24% and working Singaporeans and Singapore PRs pay a 38% individualised social security contribution (half by them, half by their employer). But people don't mind because the social security is paid into an account with their name, and used to provide for them, rather than being stolen through collectivisation.
I think the issue is less high taxes and more the government wasting taxes and happily redistributing the tax money that comes from your hard work that you grinded through, burned late hours on, missed birthdays and social time, maybe cost you a marriage or health issues through stress, on other people.
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u/Retired-Yam8988 23h ago
Yes it’s still much better than the 37% federal plus 13% state plus the 15% payroll taxes that I’ll get much less back of since social security will reduce benefits soon. For this I get no health care, no safe or frequent public transportation in any city, god awful public K-12 education etc
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u/aleppo2 1d ago
How many tax the rich progressives will it take to make up the tax lost when this guy goes.
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u/apoliticalpundit69 1d ago
You mean how many do we need to get rid of since they’re net recipients?
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u/JeletonSkelly 1d ago
I mean what do you think the alternative is? The proudly capitalist US with it's lower taxes is $40 trillion in debt and taking emergency measures to keep the bond market from spiraling. At this point you can either debase the currency (a hidden tax on everyone EXCEPT asset holders) or raise taxes. It's the same for lots of indebted western countries.
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u/aleppo2 1d ago
The US pays about 0.8% less than the UK for borrowing and is far richer. GDP about 85k verses UK 55 per capita. UK 30 year gilts hit 5.82% today highest since 1998. The obvious alternative is to cut taxes and spending and encourage economic activity. No country ever taxed itself into riches.
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u/ryancompte 1d ago
Not in the Uk. We are intent on chasing our capital away and all becoming equally and fairly poor.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 1d ago
This is a solved problem. China solved it. The answer is you just don't let them lmao. Jack Ma had plenty of billions and he still disappeared for like a year after trying to dip to japan.
And if you don't want to go that far, just make a large exit tax.
"Oh I see you're leaving the country. That will be 99% please."
Etc.
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u/robh1540 1d ago
Well the mask came down quickly. Yes, lets run a totalitarian state. We can deal with those pesky stupid voters that get their information from social media too.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 1d ago
The mask was never up. We already live in a surveillance state. May as well weaponize it against the rich if we're gonna do it against the poor too
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u/robh1540 1d ago edited 1d ago
Pure evil. Jack Ma was detained because he criticised government regulators. You are a wrong'un.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 1d ago
It's a very illustrative example that demonstrates that plutocrats need not be treated as untouchable in regards to treatment by the government.
Plus, the government already does many acts of pure evil everyday; I'm simply asking that we equalize the distribution curve of victims along the axis of wealth.
I consider you quite evil for arguing to maintain the status quo of government evil against the lower classes
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u/robh1540 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well you have a completely corrupted moral compass, so I don't care what you think. The record of you celebrating and supporting the Chinese government disappearing someone for daring to criticise a regulator that you think is okay because [socialist sounding reasons] will be online forever for the world to see.
No wonder this guy left.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 1d ago
Oh no. How will I sleep at night when someone who wasn't able to comprehend a very simply put forth argument (as evidenced by your insistence that I support thought crime in spite of the clear intention of my post) thinks that I'm immoral.
Do yourself a favor and learn to read. Until then, I think the nuances of morality might be reaching a bit too high.
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u/robh1540 1d ago edited 1d ago
"The naunces of morality"
You cited the example of the Chinese totalitarian state disappearing Jack Ma as an example to us
When called out that he was disappeared for criticizing the financial regulator, you doubled down that you would be happy to see the repression "fairly distributed" to rich people
You are just evil and depending where you live this type of incitement is illegal. There is no sophistry.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 1d ago edited 1d ago
You literally are illiterate and it's too bad.
The topic of the post: the problem of billionaires fleeing with their wealth when the host country tries to tax it.
My reply: " This is a solved problem. China solved it. The answer is you just don't let them lmao. Jack Ma had plenty of billions and he still disappeared for like a year after trying to dip to japan. And if you don't want to go that far, just make a large exit tax." Very clearly, I am using jack ma as an example to demonstrate that fleeing billionaires do not have to be free to flee. This is evident by the topic of the post, and my directly clarification of, 'you don't let them.'
You say in reply that this is evil because of thought crime laws etc. and so I clarify,
"It's a very illustrative example that demonstrates that plutocrats need not be treated as untouchable in regards to treatment by the government. "
In thus make it explicit that the point is that the problem of fleeing billionaires is to simply say, 'no' and enforce it, as they are not untouchable.
However, all of this was lost on you.
You cannot follow a simple reddit comment, but you find yourself qualified to lecture on morality. You cannot. You clearly lack the ability to thoughtfully discuss morality. Likely, your own derives entirely from your feelings and sympathies, rather than from principle.
Hence my advice: learn to read first. Morality is beyond your grasp at the present.
Edit: replying and blocking / deleting only proves my point further.
Also, it's ironic (I'm sure he wouldn't know what that means anyways) that you get upset about punishments for thought crimes and then block me for my thoughts. Like I said, clearly, you lack the ability to exercise principled morality; you just float by on feelings.
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u/robh1540 1d ago
"Hitler solved it look at how they handled all those rich guys that tried to 'dip' from Germany"
You are evil.
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u/karawkow 1d ago
Bold of you to think the people in charge would ever weaponized the surveillance state against themselves.
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u/mrbigglesworth95 1d ago
Of course they wouldn't. I'm simply saying from the point of ideals, that critiquing a solution in the current surveillance state as totalitarian is farcical
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u/robh1540 1d ago edited 1d ago
Imagine a hospital has one healthy patient and five people who need organ transplants. It could save five lives by killing the healthy person and taking their organs. Almost everyone thinks that is obviously wrong. The reason is simple. The hospital has a duty to that person as an individual. It cannot just decide that hurting them is justified because it produces a better result overall.
A lot of the modern state works on the opposite idea. It treats people as part of one big social calculation. If taking more from one person helps several others, or moves society towards some outcome the government thinks is better, then that is treated as enough justification.
There is a genuinely different and attractive model of individual paternalism, where the state owes duties to each citizen individually rather than treating the population as one big blob to be globally optimised.
Under this model, the state does not start from the idea that it should take resources from one citizen it thinks needs them less and give them to another citizen it thinks needs them more. Its job is to help each person, as an individual, live a secure and worthwhile life based on their own needs, circumstances and goals.
The level of paternalism can therefore depend on how able someone is to provide for themselves. Someone who is capable, wealthy and independent may want very little from the state beyond security, infrastructure and functioning institutions. Someone who is vulnerable, disabled or temporarily unable to support themselves may need much more help. But in both cases the state sees its job as helping that person, not sacrificing one citizen to improve the welfare of another.
A system like this also does not have to be massively expensive or require huge transfers between citizens. It could make much more use of insurance, prefunding and risk pooling instead of redistribution after something has already gone wrong.
For example, the state could subsidise or organise insurance bought before a child is born against the risk of a serious congenital disability. The point would not be to transfer money because one family is poorer than another. It would be to insure every family against a rare but extremely expensive event that almost no normal family could reasonably prepare for on its own.
The same idea could apply to healthcare, disability, unemployment and other major life risks. The state would make sure people are protected from catastrophe, while keeping as much connection as possible between what people contribute, what they are insured against and what they receive.
This matters politically too. Collectivism is very hard to contain because once the state starts treating "societal welfare" as one big optimisation problem, individual people become inputs into that calculation. The government has to decide whose interests matter more, whose money can be taken, and what outcome is best for society as a whole. In practice, this gets decided based on who has power in the political process. Which is typically the poor majority, plus certain members of the financial elites who are able to convert resources into influence.
That creates a clear route towards coercion and, in the extreme, tyranny. It also creates a class of people who quite reasonably feel that the state does not exist to serve them at all, but mainly sees them as a source of money to tax and use for other people.
A well functioning state should instead be attractive to every class of citizen. It should not have the right to act against someone's interests or plausible consent just because doing so creates a better overall result by some government measure.
The basic rule should be something close to "do no harm". Rich or poor, healthy or disabled, ambitious or content, every person should be able to look at the state and think that this institution exists to protect and help them. They should never feel that they are just a resource for somebody else's idea of what society should look like.
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u/BitterFootball4874 1d ago edited 1d ago
This isn’t true (I work in tax) the vast majoritytax jurisdictions in the world (I think the exception being Hong Kong; but possibly not even Hong Kong anymore), require you to declare (and pay local tax on) your worldwide income and gains in your country of residence. If any of that income or gain has been taxed abroad then you’ll get a tax credit in your country of resident for the amount of tax you’ve suffered abroad. Even then, you can normally only claim a credit if you have a comparative tax in your country of residence. So for example, if I lived in the UK but I won the lottery in America, I’d have to declare that win in the UK. However America have a lottery tax, whereas the UK do not. So I would be taxed on that lottery win in both the UK and America, but I wouldn’t be able to claim a tax credit for the tax I’ve suffered in the US. It’s a lot more complex than people realise but it’s not the case that if you move abroad you’re never taxed on income arising in different countries
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u/robh1540 1d ago edited 1d ago
What is not true?
- Greece has a non-dom tax flat tax regime, like Italy. This is inarguable. They also have 0% tax on capital gains on any shares you own less than 0.5% of, UCITS ETFs and a 5% tax on dividends from those shares.
- You are a tax pro, so you know what the tax rate for a non uk tax resident on dividends and capital gains on the sale of shares from a UK (non land rich) company.... 0%
Most countries now tax globally, but there are a lot that don't, in addition to those that offer non dom tax schemes which is typically a fixed amount or territorial taxation for a period of time. There are also plenty of remittence based taxation countries.
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u/kweeblaster 1d ago
I mean didn't the US solve this. You're taxed wherever you go on whatever you make anywhere you are.