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How Spain put up wealth taxes - without chasing away the billionaires (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/upliftingnews@lemmy.world
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[–] 148 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Anyone who thinks that "chasing away billionaires" is even a thing that can happen needs to read The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight by Cristobal Young, by far the most extensive actual study on the subject.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It makes sense intuitively. By the time you become a billionaire, you can live wherever you want and have any kind of lifestyle you desire. Billionaires living in Spain live in Spain because they want to live in Spain. And all wealth past a certain point is meaningless, just a number for bragging rights. Whether someone has $10 billion or $7 billion makes zero difference in their actual lifestyle or quality of life. If you're already in a country you're happy with, why leave for a tax that has absolutely no impact on your quality of life?

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago

    This is exactly what Young's research shows; generally, when the wealthy move, they move to places with good quality of life. Tax brackets don't really factor into it. Often raising taxes on the wealthy actually increases the attractiveness of a region because the wealthy want to live in places with low crime rates, good infrastructure, that sort of thing. And a well funded government has more capacity to create those things.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I just tried finding it on Amazon. I got an error when opening it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    Like this one?

    In 2024, approximately 7,500 millionaires left the UK, a figure that was already cause for concern among UK policymakers. However, in 2025, this number has more than doubled to a record 16,500, marking the steepest annual increase of HNWI net outflows on record.

    https://www.forthcapital.com/au/articles/2025-wealth-migration-why-a-record-16-500-millionaires-are-leaving-the-uk-and-where-theyre-going

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  • [–] 41 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    That will be in large part because of the changes to the non-dom tax rules, where (broadly speaking) you could live in the UK, but opt out of the UK's tax system and pay tax somewhere else where there wasn't any tax. The people who left will largely be people who weren't paying a meaningful amount of tax anyway.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Bingo. They're not actually losing tax paying millionaires. This is entirely a benefit to the UK.

    Also, let's put that number in perspective. There are over three million millionaires in the UK.

    That's why you never, ever see news articles about tax changes supposedly driving away millionaires use percentages. Because if they did the headline would be that in two years the number of millionaires in the UK has shrunk by half a percent.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    3 million sounds low. I'd assume most home owners over 50 would be millionaires in 2025, or does it only count if a married couple has 2+ million?

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