“In Tax We Trust”. This paraphrase of the famous “In God We Trust” the official national motto of the United States is the new leitmotif of more than 150 large American fortunes. American actor Mark Ruffalo, known for his role as the Hulk in Marvel-labeled films, has joined the call of these wealthy claimants to be taxed more, as the world’s elites gather at the Davos Economic Forum . In 2012, he had already supported the “Robin Hood Tax” another American initiative to reduce inequalities between richer and poorer.
At the time he was ironic about the consequences of the subprime crisis which had not been drawn by Wall Street or the greatest fortunes. “The tragic irony is that, while ordinary Americans are still picking up the pieces today, those most responsible – Wall Street – have returned to their stranger-than-fiction reality,” he once quipped. “Today, the derivatives market alone is 70 times larger than the entire economic output of the planet; a stack of Everest-sized $100 bills is traded in currency markets every three minutes; computer algorithms win millions for their master by playing thousands of times per second” he already worried.
The actor is among the latest signatories of an open letter entitled “In Tax We Trust”, first published during a virtual conference in Davos in January, and which was joined at the time by a of the heirs to the Disney empire, Abigail Disney. “While the world has seen immense suffering over the past two years, we have seen our fortunes increase during the pandemic, but few, if any, of us can honestly say that we pay a fair share of taxes. », is it written in this updated letter on the occasion of the Davos Forum. The group of “patriotic millionaires” behind the call says the number of signatories to the letter has risen from 100 in January to more than 150 in May.
A former BlackRock as president of the “patriot millionaires”
Its chairman Morris Pearl, former chief executive of financial giant BlackRock, pledged in a statement that he would “continue to press international leaders to heed our call: Tax the rich before it’s too late.” “. Taxing the wealthiest is less effective than other money-raisers, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann said in Davos on Tuesday.
“It does not necessarily generate a lot of financial resources”, judged the leader during a conference. “In terms of political effect it is attractive, but in terms of objectives it is not so effective”, he added, pointing out on the other hand the effectiveness of property taxes. “Wealth taxation has a huge scope, it has been tested and in some countries it works,” retorted Oxfam executive director Gabriela Bucher.
The NGO is campaigning for an exceptional solidarity tax on the wealth newly acquired by billionaires during the pandemic, with the aim of using the resources generated to provide support to the most modest, pending a more sustainable tax. “It would be impossible to spend all the money that has been accumulated on one life,” she said on Tuesday. The OECD, for its part, is at the origin of a project for the minimum taxation of multinationals and the distribution of taxation where they make their profits, currently under discussion.