“Tax the rich”: British millionaire Phil White demonstrates for more tax justice on the sidelines of the Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 18, 2023 (AFP / Fabrice COFFRINI)
To reduce wealth inequality, “tax me and tax people like me”, urges in an interview with AFP Phil White, a British millionaire present at the Davos forum, judging that these differences “fragment the world”.
“If I were on minimum wage and I called for taxation of the richest, few people would listen to me”, laughs the 71-year-old engineer by training who made his fortune thanks to the sale of a consulting company to a private equity group a few years ago.
“I made enough money to be well off,” he admits without saying more. But, he continues, “I would be very happy to pay more taxes, and I ask my government: tax me and tax people like me”.
Like him, more than 200 other “patriotic millionaires” from 13 countries called on Wednesday in an open letter sent to participants of the Davos Forum to be taxed more. Among them, “people who have inherited, people who have worked, entrepreneurs, traders”, underlines Phil White.
– Mark Ruffalo, Abigail Disney… –
Also personalities like the American actor Mark Ruffalo, known for his role of Hulk in the Marvel films, and one of the heirs of the Disney empire, Abigail Disney.
“The main theme of the Davos Forum this year is unity in a fragmented world. This is exactly what we observe”, says Mr. White, believing however that it is the inequalities of wealth “that fragment the world ” and nothing else.
These inequalities have soared over the past ten years, worried the NGO Oxfam in a report published at the opening of the annual Swiss meeting on Monday.
Out of $100 of wealth created, $54.4 went into the pockets of the top 1%, while 70 cents went to the bottom 50%, she found, also advocating for increased taxation billionaires in order to halve the number by 2030.
For Phil White, who also participated in a march for climate protection in Switzerland on Sunday, the increased taxation of large fortunes could start at 1 or 2% each year from 4 or 5 million dollars of wealth. “These are not huge sums, over time it would erode extreme wealth,” he says.
Videoconference with US billionaire Bill Gates during an IAEA conference at the Washington Convention Center on October 26, 2022 (AFP/Archives/Brendan Smialowski)
At a time when philanthropy is very fashionable among the very wealthy, like the pledges made by billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, the Briton considers that this approach is “a step in the right direction” but that “it is not at all the right answer” to reduce inequalities because it is much less effective than taxation.
Moreover, “some do it just for image reasons”, he believes, adding that the public must realize that “philanthropy is sometimes simply hiding behind a sheet of respectability in front of the public”.
© 2023 AFP
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