TRTWORLD — Africa Matters
20260808 163000 UTC
505 transcript segments
Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp)
Data courtesy of The GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/), from the Internet Archive TV News Archive.
Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:00:09] You're watching TRT World, I'm Yashini Padiachi with the reminder of our
[00:00:13] main headlines. Iran's foreign minister says
[00:00:16] a Tehran and Oman are very close to deal a new shipping route through the
[00:00:20] straight of Hormus with technical and legal issues largely
[00:00:23] of resolved. Iran's revolutionary guard also issued a stark
[00:00:27] warning saying Tehran can can
[00:00:29] of allow. to pass through if the US accepts all of its
[00:00:33] conditions such as lifting the blockade of its
[00:00:35] ports the reopening
[00:00:39] of the straight of hormol is in fact subject to conditions said
[00:00:43] by the Islamic Republic of Iran and the straight will
[00:00:47] of be reopened on the basis of those conditions that depends on the extent to which the United
[00:00:51] States accepts the conditions determined by the Islamic Republic of
[00:00:55] of Iran. Turkey Saudi Arabia and
[00:00:59] Pakistan. have signed a landmark
[00:01:01] a defense pact in Mecca, pledging attack on one will be treated as an
[00:01:05] attack on all.
[00:01:06] a The Turkish President Erdogan says the deal reaffirms the right to
[00:01:10] self-defense and is not aimed any country. The deal
[00:01:14] comes as tensions have grown across the region since the war on Iran
[00:01:17] started. Russian overnight strikes on Ukraine's
[00:01:21] keive
[00:01:21] of region have killed three people, including a
[00:01:24] of child, three others were injured when multiple locations just
[00:01:27] of outside the capital were also hit at. comes as
[00:01:30] of president Zelensky visits Serbia on his first official visit, it's
[00:01:34] one
[00:01:34] of the few European countries that have maintained friendly relations with
[00:01:38] Russia. We have now reached an
[00:01:42] agreement with Trump that will grant the licenses, but just imagine if we had received them
[00:01:46] four
[00:01:46] of years ago, we would already be manufacturing patriots for
[00:01:49] in everyone, believe me, and Europe,
[00:01:51] of the parts of Europe that one and would like to have patriots,
[00:01:55] anti-ballistic systems and missiles would already have them all, I'm
[00:01:59] absolutely certain. Authorities
[00:02:02] say fire at the Ilskiy oil refinery in Russia's southern crasnador
[00:02:06] region has been extinguished. Russia's defense ministry said its air
[00:02:10] defenses destroy 397 Ukrainian drones over
[00:02:14] multiple regions overnight. And typhoon dolphin is moving
[00:02:18] towards China with the sustained wind speed of 162 km an
[00:02:22] hour. It's already triggered heavy rains in northern Taiwan and passed close to southern
[00:02:26] Japan where it injured five people and caused a large scale.
[00:02:30] back
[00:02:30] in out, the news continues here on TRT World, after
[00:02:34] Nexus, I'll see you again at the top
[00:02:36] of the
[00:02:36] hour.
[00:02:44] i
[00:02:53] British people haven't been tack so hard for decades, so is
[00:02:56] it time to squeeze more out
[00:02:59] of the very rich? the so-called wealth tax, a group of over
[00:03:02] hundred British millionaires including ex-football star Gary Linicker
[00:03:06] thinks it is, and they're asking the government to tax them
[00:03:10] and other rich people
[00:03:11] of more to create a fairer society. However, is it a good
[00:03:15] idea? has it ever worked? we asked two multi-millionaires,
[00:03:19] what they think? I know how hard it is to have nothing, but I've earned
[00:03:23] what I've got, the wealthy get wealthier, money begets money, and
[00:03:26] inequality just rises and rises, more from them and... moment, but
[00:03:30] first what is a wealth tax and how would it
[00:03:33] work? we need to
[00:03:35] of tax the billionaires, tax working people less, tax the super rich more,
[00:03:39] tax worth not work. it's
[00:03:41] of just fair, where else are you going to get the money from?
[00:03:44] raiding the piggy bank
[00:03:45] of the ultra wealthy is attempting
[00:03:47] of ruse for governments on the hunt for more cash. high net worth
[00:03:51] individuals are very good at keeping income away from the tax
[00:03:54] man, but a wealth tax targets what they actually own, compared
[00:03:58] to a monthly paycheck. It's much harder to hide a mansion or
[00:04:02] picasso. This is the wealth tax equation. You
[00:04:06] add up the value of a person's property, investments, savings, business
[00:04:10] assets, take away any debts
[00:04:12] of and that's the net worth. You then take a percentage
[00:04:16] of the net worth. There are usually threshholds. For example,
[00:04:19] economists Gabriel
[00:04:21] of Zuckman
[00:04:21] of and Ben Tippet have suggested the UK government introduce a
[00:04:24] 2% minimum
[00:04:26] in tax, their term for wealth tax, on households worth more than
[00:04:30] 100 million pounds or $135 million. the
[00:04:34] of group called patriotic millionaires including
[00:04:38] of of figures like footballer Gary
[00:04:41] a of Linica, music producer Brian Eno and filmmaker Richard Curtis signed an open letter in Britain saying they were more than happy to
[00:04:45] pay the 2% wealth tax any fortune over 10 million pounds or
[00:04:48] around $13.5 million dollars. The
[00:04:51] of whole thing's gone upside down that the playing field is
[00:04:55] completely
[00:04:57] of tilted right into the pockets
[00:04:58] of the wealthiest people. but there are plenty of reasons wealth taxes
[00:05:02] have poor record of success. people can be wealthy on paper
[00:05:06] because they own an expensive house for
[00:05:08] of example, but have no liquid cash. that means they may not have the
[00:05:11] funds to pay. the tax bill when it arrives short of being forced to sell
[00:05:15] their house (not ideal) and of course the other issue very
[00:05:19] wealthy people are highly mobile and tend to take their money elsewhere in the
[00:05:23] world when they feel threatened and 2% of nothing
[00:05:26] is well the maths on that one is much easier.
[00:05:30] well let's bring in our two millionaires now and we have Mike Berners Lee
[00:05:34] who would like to see a wealth tax introduce and we also have
[00:05:38] Tony Ershaw who is strongly against it. our two economists will
[00:05:42] weigh on the debate a little later in the program after they've heard the
[00:05:46] millionaires talking uh
[00:05:47] so let's go with you first of all mike,
[00:05:49] you signed this letter uh to the government asking for a wealth
[00:05:52] tax, why do you think it's necessary? well
[00:05:56] because it's the simplest way of raising the revenue
[00:06:00] um to fund safer, more secure
[00:06:04] and more just society from which everybody, including the
[00:06:08] wealthiest people will benefit, so yeah if you get
[00:06:11] to um... point of wealth where you have reasonable amount
[00:06:15] of disposable income, you actually better off by having a
[00:06:18] society in which for example the crime rate is reasonably low and
[00:06:22] everybody can afford good healthcare and basic services are working
[00:06:26] properly and you're secure against threats um international
[00:06:30] threats as well so for all these reasons it's by far yeah it's it's
[00:06:33] by far um something that we all benefit
[00:06:36] from and the natural dynamics the
[00:06:40] economy are that the wealth. "unless you do something about it, the
[00:06:44] wealth get wealthier, the wealthy get wealthier, money begets money, and
[00:06:48] inequality just rises and rises,
[00:06:50] and uh, that throughout history, that has led to
[00:06:54] catastrophic collapse of civilizations, so it's something you
[00:06:58] need to intervene on, and why it needs to be a wealth
[00:07:02] tax is because it's not good me just giving all my
[00:07:06] money, uh, what I'll benefit from is if me
[00:07:10] and everybody who's as wealthy as me or wealthier
[00:07:14] does likewise, you and others like
[00:07:17] Tony Ernshaw. Tony, are you
[00:07:19] in? No,
[00:07:22] I disagree with it, it's not because
[00:07:25] entrepreneurs are greedy, it's because it simply
[00:07:29] doesn't work, it does the opposite of what we're trying to
[00:07:33] achieve, and that is to raise more taxes for for the
[00:07:36] government,
[00:07:37] it is to create more business in and around the UK, it's
[00:07:41] to attract. businesses to the UK and
[00:07:45] for instance, if you put a 2% wealth tax on
[00:07:49] 100 million pound, that's two million pound, okay that
[00:07:53] I have to find. now millionaires across
[00:07:57] this country don't have liquid two
[00:08:00] million pounds just lying around, so we have to do one of
[00:08:04] two things, either sell that asset and to
[00:08:08] or refinance it to be able to pay for that tax
[00:08:11] or... we have to draw down that money from our companies which we
[00:08:15] own. now we've already paid
[00:08:18] 25%
[00:08:22] um corporation tax on that money,
[00:08:25] then when we draw down as a dividend we are then
[00:08:28] paying another 39, nearly
[00:08:31] 40% tax on that as as
[00:08:34] a dividend. um, so it
[00:08:38] doesn't work. now we've got countries across Europe who have...
[00:08:42] this over 10 countries and Austria, Denmark,
[00:08:46] Germany and one the most high profile ones and was in
[00:08:50] Sweden where the owner the founder of
[00:08:54] IKEA actually left the company and that's what's been happening in this
[00:08:58] country. In 2025 we
[00:09:00] had 1ous so sorry
[00:09:04] 16 and a half thous millionaires leave this company. Now
[00:09:08] why is that important? These millionaires are business owners like.
[00:09:13] self: we employ people, we pay our taxes on our
[00:09:16] business, we pay personal tax, we spend in this company, but we employ people, which is the most
[00:09:20] vital part of it, and these people i employ also pay income tax,
[00:09:24] corporation tax, and without people like
[00:09:27] myself, the country will
[00:09:30] suffer and will have less capital investment, and
[00:09:34] overall and the company will not will raise less tax, and and tony, if the
[00:09:37] government did bring a 2% tax on millionaires
[00:09:41] with over. million and assets, would you be tempted to leave the
[00:09:45] country? I love the UK,
[00:09:49] um, I think it's one the best places to do business, um, but there has to be
[00:09:53] tipping point, doesn't that when you say actually, is it
[00:09:56] better for me to do business elsewhere?
[00:10:00] um, and lot of people have already done that, like I said, 16 and half thous millioners have done it in
[00:10:04] 2025, we into 2026, um, we need to be open for
[00:10:08] business, Britain needs to be open for business, we need to be pulling in
[00:10:11] investment,
[00:10:12] to be actually lowering corporation tax, maybe things like not taxing
[00:10:16] young people, because at the moment they can't get a job if we lower the taxes and
[00:10:20] give businesses what they need, which is incentives, every business needs
[00:10:23] incentives. "we can actually stop the gap
[00:10:27] from young people being employed, and we can we can raise more taxes
[00:10:31] overall, okay, let me actually even say, let me just put
[00:10:35] that to to Mike, Mike, um, Tony there, raising the possibility
[00:10:39] that you, actually it would be disincentive for business
[00:10:42] people to um, you create employment and so on, and that they
[00:10:46] would just leave, basically just leave the country if you brought in a wealth
[00:10:50] tax that you're proposing, so first of all, will people just leave, I mean it's
[00:10:54] funny if..." people were to leave, if if wealthier people were to
[00:10:58] leave, um, that would just be a sign of, their wealth actually
[00:11:02] imprisoning them, you know, if you if you find yourself you're so rich that you're no
[00:11:05] longer free to live in the country you want to, you want to live in, because you're afraid that you'll
[00:11:09] be slightly less rich, um, i don't think that's the case, and when
[00:11:13] this has been tried in the scandinavian countries where wealth tax has
[00:11:17] worked, only something like 0.01% the population did
[00:11:21] leave, i think i want emphasize the extent
[00:11:25] which uh we all benefit from the tax that
[00:11:29] we pay being put into public services, so
[00:11:31] Tony, as he grew up uh benefited
[00:11:35] from going to school, I also went had a great
[00:11:39] state education that was funded by tax payers and
[00:11:43] my most of my staff also had the same
[00:11:46] now as I grew up if I got ill,
[00:11:50] which I did from time to time, I could get um, I could get my
[00:11:54] healthcare. sorted out for free and all this is incredibly important and it's
[00:11:58] incredibly important for me and probably Tony for his workers
[00:12:02] as well, that he knows that if they get ill uh they
[00:12:06] can get their health seen to and
[00:12:08] that their relatives are getting health sure sure the thing is
[00:12:10] Mike, Tony knows better than anyone, he he actually grew up
[00:12:14] a council house how difficult it can be starting from the bottom
[00:12:18] and all the way through he's paid his dues, Tony just want to come in
[00:12:22] on that, yeah I think... it's important to recognize
[00:12:26] that um as business owners um for instance
[00:12:30] i started my business when i was 19 year old my very first business i started with
[00:12:34] 300 pound my background is i come from a counselor state quite a
[00:12:38] rough area actually and i grew
[00:12:39] up in poverty um and i managed to get half
[00:12:43] decent GCS at school um and i basically went into the
[00:12:47] business world i started off actually as to windo cleaner um now i
[00:12:51] have a multi million pound business which operates in every single
[00:12:55] town and city in the UK and but did that with lot of stress, lot of
[00:12:59] financial risk to meself, lot of pressure, lot of hard work. there was
[00:13:03] some days i wasn't sure i could pay my my rent,
[00:13:07] um, some some months i was that worried and made sure paid my employees before i
[00:13:10] even paid myself, um, i remember eat having one meal a day
[00:13:14] sometimes, eating beans toast from aldi because that's all i could afford, that's when a
[00:13:18] t of beans only three pents, and she can't lecture me on on these
[00:13:22] things because i know how hard it is to have nothing. and but I've earned what I've
[00:13:26] got, and but I've also brought people up the chain with me,
[00:13:29] employed these people, you mentioned the NHS, I actually um
[00:13:33] pay for everybody who works for me for private health
[00:13:37] insurance, and their families are included in that, so anyone within
[00:13:41] their household including their children, including their wife, and
[00:13:45] so we do already pass down this wealth, and like I said, I employ over
[00:13:48] 100 people across the UK and within UK commercial
[00:13:52] group, um, but there's this thing. it
[00:13:55] raises very little tax, there's very simple things we can do,
[00:13:59] for instance if we went to cash free society, which
[00:14:02] is something we could do practically within a year or two,
[00:14:06] um,
[00:14:06] that would raise over 20 billion pound in
[00:14:10] revenue for the government, that's 2% the government
[00:14:13] spend, that would going back to your argument, build 20
[00:14:17] hospitals, it would employ 400 thous
[00:14:20] nurses, um, and it's a much better way of raising
[00:14:24] revenue.
[00:14:25] than actually just saying, what, you've done well in your life, we're just going to tax you
[00:14:29] even more for it, what incentive does that give me or anybody else who wants to start a business? thank
[00:14:33] you for that, just going to pause the debate for one second. according to one survey,
[00:14:37] vast majority of British millionaires support a wealth tax, even the
[00:14:41] ones with assets over 10 million pounds or $13 million dollars,
[00:14:45] back it. the majority the general public back the wealth tax
[00:14:48] too, and to double check we conducted our own straw poll around
[00:14:52] London. do you think we should have a wealth tax in this country? 'absolutely,
[00:14:56] yes, I do think that, I think that's that the wealthy have been getting away for far too long
[00:15:00] and they need to pay fair share their taxes. I just personally
[00:15:03] don't feel like we should penalize people for accumulating
[00:15:07] wealth and doing well. Yeah, absolutely. For the rich, I
[00:15:11] think they should definitely be paying more. I don't think so, no, some
[00:15:15] people worked hard for it, and just cuz you're rich in assets
[00:15:19] don't mean you're rich in money, so you know, it's a bit difficult for
[00:15:23] everyone. Do you need wealthy people?' ' because you want them to pay tax, who
[00:15:27] do you think pays for all the services that you get? i think there does need
[00:15:30] to be some kind of redistribution. start with the billionaires
[00:15:33] and then see how much revenue that generates and then
[00:15:37] and sort of scale it out from there, back to our panel now, so Steve
[00:15:41] Davis, it seems that millionaires and the wider British public
[00:15:45] actually back a wealth tax, but does it ever
[00:15:48] work? now the point is that, well actually it's not
[00:15:52] a good way of raising revenue, because it has all kinds
[00:15:55] of knock-on effects, as Tony explained, which are
[00:15:58] detrimental to the dynamism and growth the economy as a whole, and therefore
[00:16:02] the degree to which the government has tax base that it can generate revenue
[00:16:06] out the problem. is
[00:16:08] that as bike himself has explained towards
[00:16:10] the end there, what wealth is is assets that generate
[00:16:13] income, and if as Tony that explained start of his
[00:16:17] remarks, in order to pay a wealth tax you've got to
[00:16:20] liquidate some of that wealth, because you can't typically
[00:16:24] pay it out the current income that the asset generates, now
[00:16:27] that means you have to sell it to who? probably foreign owner, which just means
[00:16:31] a lot of that income stream is now going to go to foreigners and not be
[00:16:35] taxed, so... if you grant that we need more government
[00:16:39] revenue, this is not the most effective way of doing it, there are other ways of doing
[00:16:43] it, but he also made different argument, which is that you want to prevent
[00:16:47] accumulating wealthquality. now that's a fair
[00:16:50] enough argument, I'm not sure I agree with them, but granting for the sake of argument that that
[00:16:54] is something we should be worried about and you want to do something about it, I would argue
[00:16:58] that actually a wealth tax is not the best way of doing it, there are other
[00:17:02] things you can do which are more effective and less economically damaging like for
[00:17:06] example um reforming land title or having
[00:17:10] major radical land reforms, because it's actually things like real
[00:17:14] estate that are the prime base of wealth inequality uh,
[00:17:18] all those things that Thomas Pickety was pointing out in his book few years
[00:17:21] ago, it's been since shown that most the increase in wealth inequality he's talking
[00:17:25] about is due to real estate appreciation, houses and land
[00:17:29] becoming more monetarily valuable, and so if you do want to reduce
[00:17:33] wealth inequality, supposed to income inequality, something else uh
[00:17:37] that there are better roots to go down than using the
[00:17:40] tax system to do it, the tax system has other
[00:17:44] purposes, but I don't think that redistributing
[00:17:47] wealth is particularly good thing to use tax for. understood,
[00:17:51] thank you, and Steve Keane, would a wealth tax work in the
[00:17:54] UK? no, I don't think it would, for
[00:17:58] different reasons that have been put forward so far, I think
[00:18:01] George Monday put it very nicely a short while ago, and that was he said
[00:18:05] that the the poor paid taxes. the middle class pay lawyers and
[00:18:09] the rich pay politicians
[00:18:11] and what you get out of that is the distortions we've seen in tax rates over
[00:18:14] time that mean that the wealthier can locate their money in
[00:18:18] offshore tax havens if they wish to, they can
[00:18:21] evade paying the tax in the first instance they can lobby for tax rates to be
[00:18:25] reduced, so all this stuff means the tax is very ineffective way of getting
[00:18:29] money back from the wealthy. now if you see where they get their money
[00:18:33] from then part of it yes of course is private enterprise
[00:18:36] and of businesses and all the very difficult things that go into making
[00:18:40] a business, but a large part of why the taxes
[00:18:43] accumulated is that they don't actually pay the tax in the first
[00:18:47] place, it's something they managed to reduce their tax rate, so the effective
[00:18:51] rate on millionaires is probably below the effective rate on
[00:18:54] street on windows cleaners these days given all the changes that have
[00:18:58] occurred over time, but what we're all focusing on is the
[00:19:02] decline in the quality of public services, now major reason for that decline
[00:19:06] in the public services we've been cutting spending in the belief the government shouldn't
[00:19:10] spend more than it takes back in taxation and that's what's causing all
[00:19:14] these constraints
[00:19:15] are on public house building and hospitals and and
[00:19:19] education services and so on, and that's a fallacy. when you take a look
[00:19:23] at the accounting that's involved, the actual financial
[00:19:26] transactions that are involved in government spending and government
[00:19:29] taxation, it turns out that government spending more than it takes back in
[00:19:33] taxation is what creates fiat back money. we actually
[00:19:37] need the... government to run deficit, now the obsession that the government should not run a
[00:19:40] deficit is partially why we're we're cutting spending and cutting taxes and
[00:19:44] cutting spending and cutting taxes, driving the economy down to
[00:19:48] government is like 0% the economy rather than 20 or
[00:19:51] 30% as it is right now, what we should
[00:19:54] be doing is realizing we don't need to eliminate the deficit, that's a major
[00:19:58] part the problems we're facing, and i would also point out that
[00:20:02] you can see this is developing right-wing reactions by billion by
[00:20:05] millionaires to taxation. 'well everybody has that reaction to
[00:20:09] taxation, nobody likes taxation coming out their income. now this is
[00:20:13] something which has only occurred since World War II fundamentally, and this
[00:20:16] means that you you vote for people are going to reduce your tax, so everybody bts rotes right
[00:20:20] wing, and as you cut the tax you also cut the spending. uh, we should
[00:20:24] actually, I'd rather have transaction taxes and things like that that are much harder
[00:20:28] to evade, and that are also on something that make people think they want to
[00:20:32] vote right wing. mike, have either of our economists changed your
[00:20:36] mind on trying to
[00:20:50] to pay less tax, not more tax, and that's a massively
[00:20:53] real problem. um, I'm sympathetic to the idea of
[00:20:57] a wealth tax that begins on just the very wealthy, maybe
[00:21:01] people with over hundred million, for example, in wealth, because
[00:21:05] actually it's such a small number of people that you're dealing with that it's possible to
[00:21:09] actually uh, it's possible to actually get a handle
[00:21:12] um on that evasion, I mean, I
[00:21:16] do think I'm also sympathetic to the detail
[00:21:20] Maybe
[00:21:21] there are other mechanisms by which
[00:21:23] it is possible to raise money by
[00:21:27] reducing wealth inequality and if there's another mechanic
[00:21:31] that uh that works uh better
[00:21:35] then great, I'm up
[00:21:37] for it. I think my the biggest thing I want to say is I want to
[00:21:40] register my willingness to be part of contributing
[00:21:44] more to society because I'm able
[00:21:48] to as long. as long as
[00:21:50] others or more would do the
[00:21:54] same, and I think most people, if asked are in the
[00:21:58] same position, yes, we'd be prepay prepared to pay more
[00:22:02] for better society, provided everyone as wealthy as me,
[00:22:06] wealthy like Mike, just quickly, Tony was trying to say there that you
[00:22:09] can actually do that already, there's nothing stopping you from just going online
[00:22:13] and paying more tax, why don't you? no, because the caviat
[00:22:17] is as long as everybody... as wealthy as
[00:22:21] me or wealthier does likewise, and that's why it needs a government
[00:22:24] intervention such as through tax system. the wealth tax that you're
[00:22:28] proposing would affect people with assets over 10 million pounds or
[00:22:32] $13 million dollars, how many people who signed that
[00:22:36] letter have assets over 10 million or 10 million pounds or
[00:22:39] 13 million dollars, i know that some them are actually under that threshold so they
[00:22:43] won't be affected by the wealth tax they're
[00:22:45] proposing. well, i signed that
[00:22:49] tax i signed that letter uh and ticked the box and say a
[00:22:53] person of wealth, because when i did the sums on my total assets, including
[00:22:57] pension and everything came to more than million pounds right, and i consider that to be
[00:23:00] somebody,
[00:23:01] you know, you relatively speaking, if you don't consider that to be wealthy
[00:23:05] then then you've kind of got a problem, but the principle
[00:23:09] is that those with the greatest wealth can and should
[00:23:12] and will also themselves benefit, i think this is key point that I think
[00:23:16] I'd want to maybe emphasize to Tony, he will benefit. from
[00:23:20] being a society in which crime rates are under control and
[00:23:24] people get their health looked after and everyone in society, however
[00:23:28] wealthy they are gets the opportunity to maximize their
[00:23:31] opportunities and their potential in life. I mean,
[00:23:35] and very importantly we become a more secure
[00:23:38] nation, so all these are things, it's not as though we're taking a hit, Tony,
[00:23:42] I'm not suggesting that you and I take a hit, I'm suggesting that we actually have better
[00:23:46] lives. Well, as Tony mentioned earlier in the debate, several European countries. have
[00:23:50] tried a wealth tax, but has it ever worked on the continent? let's take
[00:23:54] a quick look. in 1990, more than dozen
[00:23:57] European countries had a wealth tax. now nearly all
[00:24:01] them have scrapped it. why? france introduced its
[00:24:05] modern wealth tax in 1982 under Francois
[00:24:08] Mitteron. it raised little revenue and was blamed for driving
[00:24:12] away the rich. in 1995, the cap limiting how much
[00:24:16] total direct tax household could pay was abolished and
[00:24:20] wealthy began to leave, an estimated 42,000 millionaires
[00:24:23] left between 2000 and 2012, taking with them not just
[00:24:27] their wealth tax revenue, but also income tax and VAT
[00:24:31] contributions. Emmanuel Macron scrapped the wealth tax in
[00:24:35] 2018, replacing it with tax on property wealth over
[00:24:38] $1.4 million. Sweden's wealth tax dated back
[00:24:42] to 1911 and peaked at around 4% in the
[00:24:46] 1980s. Wealthy Swedes, including tennis star beyond
[00:24:50] and IKEA founder Ingabard Khambrad left to avoid it. The
[00:24:54] tax was formally abolished in 2007. Only three European
[00:24:58] countries still have a wealth tax, Norway, Spain and
[00:25:02] Switzerland. Steve Davis, as we saw many European
[00:25:06] countries have tried it, many have scrapped it with the exception of Switzerland,
[00:25:09] Norway and Spain. What lessons are there to be
[00:25:12] learned from the European examples? Well,
[00:25:16] that although wealth tax sounds pretty simple in. reality, it
[00:25:20] turns out to be very, very complicated for
[00:25:23] the fundamental reason, first of all, that there are lots and lots of international tax
[00:25:27] treaties, most these taxes aim to tax global
[00:25:30] net wealth, but the problem is if somebody for example owns real estate in the
[00:25:34] United States, they can't be asked to pay tax and say Norway or
[00:25:38] Switzerland or Spain on that wealth because the tax treaties the
[00:25:42] United States has, so all sorts of assets in global wealth are
[00:25:46] actually out of reach because the various complicated tax treaty range between...
[00:25:50] different sovereign jurisdictions, secondly, because actually
[00:25:53] valuing wealth, amongst the super wealthy is very, very difficult,
[00:25:57] because lot their wealth consists of tradeable financial assets
[00:26:01] and working out. the net value of all those assets is actually
[00:26:05] very, very tricky, and so in practice wealth taxes tend to
[00:26:08] become very, very complex, and they typically
[00:26:12] therefore don't raise
[00:26:13] kind of large sums of revenue that many people hope that they will. they
[00:26:17] also tend to have very significant knock-on effects in particular, they tend
[00:26:21] to fall mainly on people who generate a large amount of current
[00:26:25] income out of business activities, not so much on people who
[00:26:29] hold what you might call passive wealth such as realist. states of
[00:26:33] various kinds, which is exactly the opposite of what you want to do
[00:26:36] essentially, and so for those reasons they tend to find that they're
[00:26:39] simply not worth the trouble, that's why they give it up, and finally,
[00:26:43] as Norway for example, has found out since 1921,
[00:26:47] what you often get is an exodus of very high networth
[00:26:51] individuals, lot of Norway's richest citizens have left
[00:26:55] since the tax rate there was put up to 1.1% for really large
[00:26:59] fortunes and they've moved elsewhere, notably to Switzerland, of a wealth
[00:27:03] tax, but a much lower level, and also a non-federal basis.
[00:27:07] so you have all these different problems, and the conclusion that lots of
[00:27:10] actually pretty left-wing governments in Europe are arrived at is, it's just
[00:27:14] not worth the amount of administrative grief and low
[00:27:18] results that you get from it, you might as well look for some other
[00:27:22] way of getting income out the wealthy uh and tax
[00:27:25] revenue that is out the wealthy and of dealing with wealth inequality, that's what
[00:27:29] you're worried about. mike, just... towards the end the
[00:27:33] program, a quick answer from you and Tony, um, do you expect the government to
[00:27:37] actually listen to you? now we have new prime minister, Andy Burnham, he said it's not
[00:27:41] off the table, but it doesn't look like it's his
[00:27:43] priority. well, I'm sympathetic
[00:27:47] to detailed and newanst analysis of what the exact
[00:27:50] best mechanism is, if there's if there's something that
[00:27:54] practically works better than a wealth tax
[00:27:58] at finding ways of taking money from the very wealthy and using...
[00:28:03] to improve our society, then I, you, I'm sympathetic
[00:28:06] to uh, getting at some different form of detail, but I think the
[00:28:10] principle is absolute, that's that's really what I'm here
[00:28:14] to advocate for, I think society
[00:28:18] even for the very wealthy. You wrote a letter to the prime minister, I'm just
[00:28:21] wondering, he's he's new into the job, although he's just gone on
[00:28:24] holiday uh, do you think that he is going to take up
[00:28:28] your cause? I hope Andy Bernam uh does the right.
[00:28:32] thing a few different fronts, I think he's
[00:28:34] got a there's a great opportunity to put us a good
[00:28:38] a better course here if he takes them, I hope I hope he does understood
[00:28:42] and turny your message to Andy Burn, I'm sure he's
[00:28:44] watching, well I'm hoping Andy's going to be a bit of a
[00:28:48] right leaning socialist and um actually instead of just taxing is
[00:28:52] maybe think about a bit of growth for the UK which will raise lot more
[00:28:56] tax then a wealth tax whatever whatever create and
[00:29:00] get the get the company the country. open for business again
[00:29:03] and start bringing in outside investment instead of circulating the same money round and
[00:29:07] round and round. Tony Ennshaw, Mike Berner's Lee, Steve
[00:29:11] Daves and Steve Keane. Thank you all very much for your expertise today, really
[00:29:15] appreciate that. And thank you at
[00:30:09] and talks with oman, Iran's foreign minister says his country
[00:30:13] is very close to opening the straight of hormos. Hello
[00:30:17] and welcome to TRT World Live from Istanbul and Yashini
[00:30:21] Padiachi. Also coming up, Russia launches hundreds
[00:30:24] of ballistic missiles and drones in its latest attack as the
[00:30:28] Serbian President Alexander Vutic voice a support for. crimes
[00:30:32] territorial integrity. a UN report
[00:30:36] warns at least 8 million children in Sudan are suffering due to the
[00:30:40] civil war. while unicef
[00:30:44] reports says Palestinian children in Gaza have born the brunt of Israeli
[00:30:48] attacks with one child killed daily since the October
[00:30:52] cease
[00:30:52] fire.