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The French still have a progressive wealth tax based on property only.
Not the same tax but this was a clever way of spotting undeclared property wealth:
leggy_blonde-
The French still have a progressive wealth tax based on property only.
Liked the article on pools!
Just looked this up, assume you are talking about the taxe foncière? Interesting concept, the way it's calculated it ends up looking a bit like the tax on imputed rent that they have in the Netherlands. It actually makes quite a bit of sense - you get a "benefit in kind" from living in a property you own, this can be thought of as a dividend on an investment.
I guess back in the day the council tax system would have achieved a similar thing, but the top rates are now a joke in places with high value properties.
The US obviously has a pretty high property tax, but from what I've seen of how it is applied, the proceeds stay very local so it just makes rich places even nice and doesn't achieve any redistribution.
NickCJ
I think the problem with wealth taxes is that it's trivially easy to shuffle wealth around the world and avoid these sorts of taxes nowadays. I have a memory that the French give up on their wealth tax because it was too hard to administer and didn't raise a great deal?
The capital gains tax changes make total sense to me. TBH I would go further and tax inheritances as income as well.