Yay! Germany is the second country having reached the #TaxTheRich European Citizen's Initiative minimum threshold! Only 5 more countries to go! Sign the initiative for your country now!

Thank you. Signed.

I agree that I would not call it "ultra rich", but I don't see why you shouldn't pay more taxes at that point. You're clearly still incredibly well off, and the ceiling & opportunities are much higher for you at that point too, to make even more money.

Call me crazy but having €1,25M in assets (beyond your professional assets and home) while there are still people in need seems like a fine point to start contributing more to society and less to further increasing your personal wealth. If I had anywhere near that much money, I'd happily double my tax rates if it went to supporting those who can't support themselves and assisting those who could benefit from it.

I also suspect the home value exception is a major loophole here. The rich would begin investing more than ever into their homes.

Probably the better way to do it would be the top 1%. For Germany that would be $3.4M, France $3.3M, Spain and Italy $2.5M. That brings you into the category of being able to have a very high quality of life, only from your capitals profits.

€1.25m doesn’t sound “ultra rich” to me. It sounds like a successful small business owner. €100m, sure.

1 million is like a good salary for 30 years (3.000€ Net for almost 28 years, 3K€ is great here in the EU).

If that's not some exceptionnal richess, well then I think it should be. Of at least tax them somewhat (the richer you are here, the less you pay in taxes)!

Billionaires are just ridiculous, parasites of the society, and should be taxed til they are just stupidly rich.

That's really really optimistic considering how well universal healthcare works everywhere compared to the US and yet there's no change in that regard.

So why don't all of the rich just leave and go live on an island together where there's no tax and no poor people?

How do those boots taste?

Up to a certain point, the rich don't leave a country because of high taxes, there are studies that support it.

Also, the rich usually are not the biggest jobs providers, most of the time in developed countries, these jobs have already been moved to China or another cheap labour country.

If I was rich I would live wherever made me happy, probably somewhere with lots of nature, and I'd be happy to pay my share in taxes cus I can trivially afford it.

It would be incredibly depressing to be rich but only find joy in hoarding money.

That's why an EU-wide measure is useful. Obviously, only a global measure could truly prevent rich people from just moving to a different country, but making it more annoying to dodge taxes than to just move a few hundred kilometers, is already a step in that direction.

In particular, on a rational level, these rich people do not need to care. They have significantly more money than they could ever spend. At best, they'd want to dodge taxes to get their high score to grow more quickly.

why the fuck would you as a rich guy live in a country that robs you with joy?

Everyone has to contribute to the system. Calling taxes robbery is just bullshit.

Anyways, the whole "the jobs will be lots" thing is bullshit too. As long as there is value to be extracted capitalists will employ people.

Those rich fucks don't contribute anyway so let them move into the desert where they can be tax free with no infrastructure, security, or amenities.