The amount of untaxed wealth hidden offshore by the richest 0.1 percent exceeds the entire wealth of the poorest half of humanity (4.1 billion people), reveals new Oxfam analysis published today ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Panama Papers. The findings show that, a decade later, the super-rich continue to exploit offshore systems to evade taxes and conceal assets, highlighting the urgent need for coordinated international action to tax extreme wealth and end the use of tax havens.
Oxfam estimates that $3.55 trillion in untaxed wealth was stashed offshore in tax havens and unreported accounts in 2024. This sum exceeds the GDP of France and is more than twice the combined GDP of the world’s 44 least developed countries.
The richest 0.1 percent holds approximately 80 percent of all untaxed offshore wealth, or around $2.84 trillion. Within this tiny group, the ultra-wealthiest 0.01 percent holds roughly half ($1.77 trillion).
Laws are for little people.
It’s LITERALLY just 16 families. Far fewer people than .1 percent. It’s 2 ten millionths of one percent.
But still to manny ordinary people rage out when higher taxes for billionaires are discussed.
They put the simp in simple minded
0.1% still equates to 8.1m people; instead, if we we’re to focus focus on the Top 1%, of the Top 1% of the Top 1% - that is only ~8,100 people.
Holding their feet to the fire, and getting them to co tribute their fair share - despite their dragon’s hoard of wealth - would quickly bring those below them with less wealth in line.
e.g. Make an example out of Elon Musk, and the Ellison’s would quickly fall in line.
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Nah, I put that argument in the same camp as “if you tax them, they will move” in New York; pure bluster and ultimately an empty threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.
If a billionaire takes out a loan against their stock portfolio (as they so often do); force that to be treated as a Capital Gains taxable event. L
For real. If they aren’t paying in, who cares if they leave wherever they are threatening to leave anyway. Just go, don’t let the trickle hit you in the economics on the way out
Just enforce an exit tax, to be honest.
Wonder if there’s a way to force all outstanding Treasury notes outside of the country to need to return back to treasury for renewal or otherwise be written off at invalid debt.
Not while the people running the USA are the same people who hide their immense wealth overseas.
Given the last Panama paper and similar leaks it’s much broader than USA :(
It’s a global class issue.
When Ukraine ousted their previous dictator, the Planet Money podcast had a piece on how the Ukrainian presidential palace had been effectively looted, and traced the absurdly long chain of shell companies that kept the actual owner obscured.
Also, the Vox/Netflix documentary series “Explained” had a genuinely good episode about billionaires. One of the things they brought up was that oligarchs store a lot of money in US real estate, like super-expensive NY condos.
This book is good too. Started in Boston and part of why America even exists as a country.
It was nearly a decade ago when I saw this, but there was a documentary, I think it was called The Spider’s Web or something like that.
Basically it was about shell companies and “trusts,” mostly centered in the Virgin Islands, where billionaires were keeping their real wealth obscured in off-shore banks.
It was mostly focused on wealthy Brits who derived their generational wealth from colonialism. It was pretty interesting though.
The guy was doing some investigative journalism, but obviously he wasn’t let into any of the buildings, and once he started to attract notice he started receiving threats and stuff. But he traced money trails backwards and they basically never led to individual people who could be held accountable for the money or how it was used.
Looking back now, I wonder how much of Epstein’s wealth was in those banks…
Are there shadow billionaires? Billionaires who are not officially recognized as such because they do such a good job of hiding their wealth?
Oh yeah, I just mean academically. We would need to be on a much different anti oligarchy footing to actually implement. But in the meantime, I like to noodle out systems and mechanisms.
Let’s say we eventually get to a renewed trust buster energy like we used the last time we broke up the corporate giants long ago.
Is there anything we could realistically do even with full control of the government, or is that money basically propping up the entire interconnected world economy?
We need a global solution. The scale of economic power is larger than the scale of our democratically controlled political power. Nationalism won’t save us.
Well you got to work ontologically. A nation is a system with existing controls. And national control is already dicey at best. Implementing a direct solution at the international level would require a system that to my knowledge doesn’t even exists. We treat the UN like an optional club not a world government.
The scale at which we exert political control has been increasing consistently for, approximately, the last 10k years. The rate has been accelerating too. There’s no reason to believe that the current hodge podge of 300 or so regional factions (nations) is the natural or final solution, and every reason to expect that political/economic power will escalate to the global level, and soon.
We should be focused on ensuring that transition is peaceful and collaborative, that the solution we converge on is fair and sustainable. We should especially be concerned with preventing that transition from being a dominance play by the players currently holding the greatest defacto power (i.e., economic, transnational corporations, and military, the USA).
One major impediment to this is the idea that all we—the ordinary people all over the world—can do is fight amongst each other at a national level about relatively trivial social issues (i.e., by voting for the marginally less bad alternative in our national elections). We can, and should, organise and strive for a democratic, fair, well-designed global political system that keeps economic power in check.
Other major impediments are the lies that a) the only alternative to the current system is totalitarian communism, or other 19th century political models, and b) that we—you and I—need to have a perfect solution in hand already. We can demand, via our respective nations, that the world’s best minds come together and design the best system possible, and that was transition to that system peacefully and rationally.
Ah… So if I’m reading you right, you’re saying:
Yes, no system currently accounts for what we NEED it to do. So the most DIRECT solution would be to create a new movement, a new SYSTEM of people, control, and influence that transcends existing abstractions like nationalities, race, culture, and have this ontologically encompassing system implement that change from its larger frame of reference.
I like that. I hadn’t considered that approach and it’s probably right on the money. I think the first step is recognition of the issue and the need for such a movement. As such… Have you thought about names?
Something you would call such an endeavor, or movement, or coalition. Something that would be instantly recognizable as to what the goal or at least spirit or attitude behind it would be? Probably seems like a silly thing to fixate on this early, but sometimes the right name is a powerful tool.
Lol.
I actually agree with most of your statement, except for “DIRECT”. That’s not part of my claim, and it shouldn’t be a goal of yours.
The terrain has been rigged so that all the direct, the locally advantageous, locally practical solutions lead back to the same toxic equilibrium. We are stuck in a historical basin of attraction and need to escape it.
The only long-term stable/viable solution, the only solution that honours our responsibility to future generations, is to avoid the immediate direct solutions, the ones that the manipulated incentive structures are set up to anticipate, and to do what you described. I’m not claiming it’s easy, or likely to happen, merely that it’s our only chance to save our species from itself.
The problem is that most of these assets are digitally held. What we need is an anonymous type attack against these accounts, similar in style to what they did in Mr. Robot.
Make it near impossible for the government to claw the money back.
I dunno I think the problem is the billionaires hoarding the money not the government trying to claw some of the money back, but that’s just me.
If you write off Treasury notes we have to either accept that MMT is real and that we can print money when needed.
Or we’d need to destroy an equal amount of money to the treasury note.
Or if MMT isn’t accurate (unlikely) then we’d see inflation as the government would effectively be unsecuring it’s debts.
Well could we somehow do it via serial number on the notes maybe? Like let’s say we use the event to denote a switch to color money instead of green only. And then we say in 10 years, all green money is expired and worthless, so every note has to come back into the Treasury to get renewed, and at that time be potentially subjected to repatriation taxes.
Think something like that could work?
That would be a mechanism for doing it, I’m just pointing out that, according to most economic theories (which I think are wrong) money requires Treasury notes to exist, otherwise you’re printing money which most economists claim will cause inflation.
Lmao, so this is fully excluding the official “net worth”. Just a handful of trillions here and there
8.2 billion people, so 0.1% of that is 8.2 million people
2.83 trillion dollars held in accounts to evade taxes means that approximately $345,000 per person is held in accounts offshore.
That seems low, in a way. I expected it to be in the dozens of millions per person. It’s also possible that my math is wrong.
The 0.01 holds 1.77 trillion so the distribution is skewed. Furthermore there are likely many thousands of accounts in the ‘small’ amounts of tens of thousands, ostensibly for every member of an extended family in things like trust funds, etc.
Yeah that makes sense
I think it’s 0.1% of wealth owning households, which would be closer to $1.42 million.
That would also mean the richest 0.01% are close to $8.85 million each.
Assuming 2 billion households, this is rough math.
Rough is right, in more ways than one.
Yep, these people definitely have some sort of disease. No one needs nor would be able to spend that kind of money. Just completely insane.
Its neurological basis for it is probably similar to that of hoarding. Hoarders might be billionaires who just never accumulated wealth
If America has a major revolution, I suspect many of the financial assets would turn out to be smoke and mirrors, rather than something of concrete value.
If it’s off the books, why dont the people holding it just take the bag and run?
They won’t give you more to hold onto and can afford a bigger military.
I’m talking about the individualm rob them like they rob us
3.55 trillion in untaxed wealth
Say you taxed them 50% of their unrealized gains, and assuming 50% of it was to the US, what percent of the US deficit could be paid?
I’d guess around 2-3%?
They should be taxed at 100% of wealth that is hidden in offshore accounts. Tax dodgers shouldn’t get to keep half of their ill-gotten gains. If someone steals a candy bar from Walmart they don’t get to keep half the candy bar.
