DAVOS, Switzerland — US actor
Mark Ruffalo on Tuesday joined a call by over 150 wealthy
people for governments to tax them more, as global elites and policymakers met
at the
World Economic Forum (WEF) in Swiss resort Davos.
اضافة اعلان
The face of Hulk in a decade of Marvel movies was
one of dozens of new millionaires to put their names to an open letter titled
“In Tax We Trust”, which was first delivered to attendees at a virtual WEF conference
in January.
“While the world
has gone through an immense amount of suffering in the last two years, we have
actually seen our wealth rise during the pandemic — yet few if any of us can
honestly say that we pay our fair share in taxes,” the letter read.
The Patriotic Millionaires group said it had boosted
the number of signatories to over 150 by May, from 100 in January.
Its chairman Morris Pearl, a former managing
director at mammoth asset manager
BlackRock, vowed in a statement to “continue
to pressure global leaders to heed our call: tax the rich before it’s too
late”.
But
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) secretary-general Mathias Cormann said that wealth taxes
could be less effective than other revenue-raising options. “They don’t
necessarily raise that much revenue,” he told a panel discussion at Davos. “In terms of the politics of it, it’s
attractive, but in terms of the substance of what it achieves it’s not that
attractive.”
Cormann did suggest that “property taxes are
probably the most efficient, least distorting” form of wealth tax. “There’s
huge scope in wealth taxation... it’s been tried, and in some countries, it
works,”
Oxfam executive director Gabriela Bucher responded. “These amounts
being accumulated. You could not spend them in several lifetimes”.
Cormann and the OECD are betting on a deal struck by
over 130 countries last year to tax multinational companies at a minimum of 15
percent to boost revenue for hard-up governments. Asked if
Washington might walk
back its commitment should Republicans win control of Congress at November
mid-term elections, Cormann said that “it’s in the rational self-interest of
the United States to be part of this deal”.
For companies, it’s “much better for them to be operating in
a globally consistent framework” rather than navigate conflicting tax regimes,
he added. “I can’t imagine that any country or any side of politics in any
country would make a judgement that would put themselves at that sort of
disadvantage.”
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