Massachusetts implemented a 4% millionaire tax in 2022 and a small capital gains tax. The results?
- extra $3b in tax revenue, extra $1.3b with the capital gains changed.
- passed a $2.5 billion infrastructure & education bill
- millionaires in Massachusetts actually grew because of the economic expansion
- collective wealth of the people in the state went up by 40% two years after it passed
It’s proven that it works. We just need policies that benefit people and not just the rich.
Some of the sources:
https://www.axios.com/local/boston/2025/04/29/millionaires-massachusetts-income-surtax-increase
But then how will Musk et al ever become trillionaires if they are taxed accordingly? /s
They will buy the media, undermine your democracy and institute fascism if you tax them.
They will also do that if you don’t tax them.
Looks like they’ve already done most of that tbh
That’s how we know!
Heard this weird comment on the radio the other day: “We can’t tax the rich because they are the best milk-cows in our stable.” Mate if you can’t get milk from a cow it’s hardly the best one in your stable.
If they don’t eat the meat and they don’t drink the milk, why keep them around?
They’re not the cows, they’re the ranch owners.
Can’t bite the hand that feeds, they might feed us one of these days!
My country (Norway) saw a lot of rich people moving to Switzerland because of more advantageous tax rules, so we actually did implement an “exit tax”!
To the surprise of no one, the rich people will not stop whining about it.
germany has a rule like that also, but people pretend like it doesn’t exist and rich people would leave if we tax them
Norway is awesome. I really admire your country
We’ve, as most of the world, been drifting right for a few decades unfortunately. The tax I mentioned was one of the main issues in last year’s election even though it affects nearly no one. That’s a sign of a small group gaining control of public discourse, which is not great…
Worth remembering: the “they’ll leave” line gets used for any reform—so it’s healthier to ask for data and design policy around outcomes, not threats.
What is the downside?
Option 1) Billionaires and no tax revenue from billionaires.
Option 2) Lower housing prices because no billionaires and no tax revenues from billionaires.
Billionaires pay taxes? Is this new?
Chuck em out the window and there’s a thousand people behind them willing and able to take their place.
So don’t close the window
“Billionaires will leave if you tax them.”
They aren’t paying enough to begin with as an overall percentage of the state’s tax, so what’s the difference if they leave?
I think the underlying threat is that they’ll bring their industry with them.
Then… Outlaw that? Like, the government can simply say “no, and if you so much as make a move, your entire company gets nationalized”
It’s simpler than that. There’s other rich people who’d gladly buy a ready to roll production facility, there’d be no real loss. But in reality they won’t leave, there’s still money to be made.
But why sell it to other rich people at all? Just keep the business collectively
That’s just how it would currently work.
Outlaw a company shutting down operations in a country?
Literally yes, outlaw a company moving to another country
How? The company isn’t operating within the jurisdiction of the original country anymore.
Cool, that’s the directives, the workers haven’t left. Nationalize all their possessions, bank accounts, and enjail everyone involved in the process.
If you tax them enough they won’t be billionaires anymore, so billionaires really wouldn’t leave.
I like your thinking.
Honestly if they’re not paying for anything in the community anyway why do we care whether or not they stay?
I’m tired of 0.1% courting and worshipping that people do.
I could not agree more. These are people who have taken greed and hoarding of wealth well into the realm of mental illness, and we are supposed to admire them!
Wouldn’t it be nice if ALL billionaires left and concentrated in a single location.
Then we could all play some Mario & Luigi.
We wouldn’t need to. They have no survival skills. They survive by leeching off the rest of us. If we isolated them from us, they’d be dead inside of a year.
Supplying them with enough narcotics and at least half of them would take themselves out.
They don’t pay their share and they don’t keep their money where they live anyway, so leave and hopefully die on the way to Dubai or whatever tax haven you decide to go, billionaire piece of shit
Putting a tax on billionaires leaving is actually a brilliant idea…
- Consistent: they made that wealth, in your country, so by the same principles of income tax, VAT, or corporation tax, we know the government believes it deserves a cut. All that money they take wth them is money the government was intending to dip into slowly over the course of 10 years or so.
- Targets a Loophole: Billionaires are of course uniquely positioned to relocate on a whim - normal people and even many millionaires will not be able to do this, as they can’t change jobs on the fly, get someone else to sell their house for them, remotely buy a house in another country.
- Motivates them to be better: the taxation of billionaires is ultimately about increasing the complexity of the system until they’re left with no choice but to be useful. But first we have to weather the storm of them trying to bribe the government not to tax them, before we can get there.
As stated in this post, this exists in several countries: Germany, Norway…
So basically the governments of the uk and usa are always like 'ah we can’t tax the rich because they’ll run away and then we’ll go from 10% tax effectiveness to 0%, when countries of a similar developememt level are already doing it and doing fine?
Apparently the US also has it (and I just read in a different 2025 article that the vast majority of expatriates do not have to pay it because they’re not rich enough).
They’ll leave, but still own their property.
Property is very taxable!
Tax the property. Tax it so high they have to sell it, creating a greater supply of property which then reduces the price of property and the cost of living. Economics 101
But price go down = abject failure. Economics 201
Eminent domain it and use it to house the poor.
Or, you know, throw them in jail and expropriate everything they own?
Too long.
- They usually don’t
- Put a punitive tax above the local equivalent of too much
- What billionaires?
Aka the great compression method. Worked great at the time, would work again. Does not even require great changes like forms of socialism do.
