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President Donald Trump said he is unwilling to support a millionaire tax because then they would “leave the country.”
“I think it would be very disruptive because a lot of the millionaires would leave the country,” Trump said during a press briefing in the Oval Office on Wednesday. “In the old days they left states. They’d go from one state to the other. Now, with transportation so quick and so easy, they leave countries,” he digressed.
“They lose their wealthy people,” Trump continued, in a clip circulating on X. “That would be bad because the wealthy people pay the tax.”
Although Trump maintained a tax on ultra-high-net-worth individual’s like himself would “be bad,” Spain benefited tremendously by reinstating a “featherlight” tax on its top 0.5% wealthiest citizens. It now raises $2.1 billion annually.
Experts reported that if Spain’s wealth tax became standard around the globe, it would add more than $2 trillion to the global economy. In the U.S., the top 0.1% control $20 trillion in assets, meaning a tax modeled after Spain’s would increase the nation’s annual tax revenue by $340 billion.
Additionally, when Norway marginally increased taxes on the rich, just .01% of the nation’s 236,000 millionaires and billionaires relocated.
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