European Green Party

• Slowly but surely, calls for a wealth tax to finance the green transition are picking up in Europe, with a number of initiatives from different political movements put the issue (back) on the political agenda.
• It found that a European tax on the 0.5% richest households would bring in 213 billion euros a year, anything but insignificant.
• This is all the more remarkable given the virtual disappearance of wealth taxes within the member states of the EU.

Ended in France, suspended in Germany

• To plug the budgetary hole, Macron replaced it with a tax on property wealth, the IFI.
• The impact of the change on reducing the tax exile rate or improving the country’s competitiveness remains unproven.

• As property was taxed less heavily than financial assets, the court asked Helmut Kohl’s government to revise the property values on which wealth tax was based.
• As the Kohl government chose not to do so, the tax was automatically suspended – though not abolished – on 1 January 1997.

An unlikely return to the national level

• In the two countries often described as the “engines of Europe”, the question of a return of capital taxation has frequently arisen.
• In Germany, all the left-wing parties put it on their manifesto at every legislative election, but with the exception of die Linke, none is taking action.
• Interviews we conducted with SPD and Green Party members of parliament between 2010 and 2016 show that the defence of wealth tax is just a façade.
• Although business assets have been excluded from the tax base, the tax was decried as a disguised corporate tax.

A European solution?

• By moving to the European level, the supporters of a wealth tax can bypass the criticism that individual nations’ firms are being weakened in European economic competition.
• It is certainly this dimension that has led France’s Ministry of Economics to keep open the possibility of a European wealth tax.
• If the European Citizens’ Initiative reaches the required number of signatures, it would enable supporters of the wealth tax to mobilise European public opinion.

Martin Baloge ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.