The bottom line for me, when trying to estimate how much could be generated by a 1% asset tax, is that in 2019 Global Wealth reached $360,603 billion - up 2.6% on 2018. This level of increase was actually very modest, compared with the 14% increase seen in 2017, or the roughly 10% annual increases seen in the early years of this century.
Nevertheless, the report predicts that the next five years will see a further 27% increase to reach €459 trillion by 2024.
For me, the implication is blindingly obvious. If we want to save our planet, which will cost $50 trillion between now and 2050 (according to Morgan Stanley), there is a simple solution. Just get everyone on the planet with assets to donate 1% per annum. That would generate around $3.6 trillion a year, increasing to $4.6 trillion a year in 2024.
Note that Credit Suisse's analysis is for Household Wealth. It presumably does not include the assets held by corporations. And, acccording to my analysis of the Forbes Global 2000, the 2000 biggest companies have assets worth over $201 trillion. Given that it is estimated that there are around 630,000 publicly traded companies around the world it is probably anyone's guess what the total quantity of assets is. I'm not sure I have the courage to download 630,000 company reports to get the information!
I also presume that Credit Suisse's analysis doesn't include assets held by trusts - as opposed to households or companies. There are dozens of different kinds of trust funds and trying to get an idea of the value of the assets held by them seems to be very difficult. This, on its own is justification enough to impose a 1% annual levy on all assets. That way, the people who are using trusts to hide their wealth and "optimise" their tax payments, would no longer be able to do it legally. In my book, every structure, individuals, corporations, and trusts would all have to pay. 1% is hardly excessive in a world where (as you can see from the graph above), the value of assets has been soaring - thanks at least in part to the efforts of people like Mario Draghi at the ECB and the €2.8 trilllion that was injected into the financial markets since 2015.
But let me just return to the rich set of data in the Credit Suisse report. Their data makes for fascinating reading - and I have put the key numbers for 2019 in a Google Sheet that you can explore.
Here, for example, I provide the numbers for the top 33 countries - those with household wealth exceeding $1 trillion. As you can see the other 137 countries only have $23.4 trillion between them. Obviously, taxing the top countries would do most of the work.
You can also sort the data by the average per capita wealth, which gives the following table for the top 50 countries.
Note that the Credit Suisse report does not take into account the relative cost of living in different countries. Average household wealth in Switzerland may be 10 times that in Chile, but a rich person in Chile might be able to live pretty well anyway.
But for the present purposes - namely, how effective would a universal 1% tax be, the numbers provided by this Global report seem perfectly relevant. They also gives a fairly realistic idea about what the average contributions would be for people living in each country. On average, for example, someone living in France would be contributing around less than €3000 per year. And, as I keep insisting, they could only be asked to pay if they had already accumulated (or inherited) assets.
Are such sums unreasonable? Well, I guess it depends how much you think it is worth to leave our children and grandchildren a planet that is habitable. I certainly think that we should be making that effort.
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