New poll finds overwhelming support for an annual wealth tax

[Buzz cook]

16. Asked and answered.

In Europe, thanks to the European Union, tax evaders could move their wealth across a border at no cost or emigrate to another European Union country while still doing business in the taxing country.

That is not the case with the US.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/elizabeth-warrens-wealth-tax-is-an-old-idea-and-its-time-has-come

Part of the problem is that other countries have shown that wealth taxes create incentives for rich people to evade them by sheltering or hiding assets, or, in extremis, by emigrating.

In fact, some important preventive steps have already been taken, particularly relating to the use of offshore tax havens. Not very long ago, rich people could simply set up bank or brokerage accounts in places like the Bahamas, Panama, and Switzerland, secure in the knowledge that they would be beyond the reach of the I.R.S. But, since the passage of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), in 2014, foreign financial institutions are legally obligated to identify accounts held by U.S. citizens and report details about them to the I.R.S.; failure to do so can lead to heavy fines.

To deter the ultra-rich from fleeing to countries without a wealth tax, it also includes a punitive “exit tax” of forty per cent on “the net worth above $50 million of any U.S. citizen who renounces their citizenship.” Tax avoidance “is not something that happens out of the blue,” Zucman said. “It is something that policymakers can encourage or discourage.”