Platner Wants to Impose a Global Wealth Tax

Graham Platner’s tax plan includes a new “global billionaire minimum tax” that would require the U.S. to coordinate taxpayer information with foreign nations, including adversaries like China.

“They sit on a golden hoard, sucking chunks of the economy into their portfolios. While the real economy withers, their economy has never been stronger. Their economy is a financialized economy, an economy of great wealth built on air, of private equity destroying productive businesses and scavenging them for parts,” says Platner’s tax plan.

“We cannot allow billionaires to defund the societies that made their fortunes possible simply by shuffling money into an offshore account. This global concentration of wealth has given a handful of people more power than entire nations, leaving workers everywhere to pick up the tab for a lopsided global economy.”

The tax plan, fueled by virulent hatred of billionaires, is available on Platner’s campaign website and was highlighted in a Tuesday article by Americans for Tax Reform.

Platner’s plan aims to establish a minimum global two percent wealth tax on billionaires, though it is not clear how Americans would in any way benefit from ensuring that foreigners pay additional taxes to their own governments.

Wealth taxes target a person’s total assets rather than income or purchases.

The plan is in line with a “Global Minimum Tax on Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals” plan composed by the EU Tax Observatory and G20, an international forum including officially designated foreign adversaries like Russia and China.

Americans for Tax Reform provided more details on that plan. They explained that it was commissioned by Brazil’s socialist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and created by French economist Gabriel Zucman.

The plan would reportedly expand global banking data exchange to include details on wealth, income, real estate, and non-financial assets, meaning that U.S. taxpayer data would be shared with China and other foreign adversaries.

In addition to his proposed global wealth tax, Platner advocated for a U.S.-specific 5-6 percent tax on all wealth over $1 billion.

“Wealth taxes have been the third rail of politics, for obvious reasons, in a nation where

billionaires can buy elections at will. But it has gone too far. Americans will not allow

ourselves to sink into a permanent underclass in a world dominated by a handful of

oligarchs,” said Platner.…Read more by Seamus Othot