Germany's Left Party wants to halve billionaires' wealth
-
Yeah you can do that, but often companies keep track of the purchase value minus depreciation. Which means that something like a building is on the balance sheet for 1m, but the actual value might be 10m. the equity is basically the assets minus the liabilities which should be the value. However, paying dividend to the shareholder will lower the equity, but it will earn the shareholders money. So I would see a lot of companies doing that to lower their equity to pay less taxes.
Evaluating intellectual property is also pretty hard to do. Generally it has an original value and you depreciate on it as well.
All of the above depends on the country, the size and type of company it is, but generally it is pretty similar. Across the western world.
-
Billionaires exploiting tax systems isn’t an inevitability—it’s a failure of governance. Saying “there’s no way to combat it” is just surrendering to the status quo. The resources exist to enforce fair taxation; what’s missing is the political will. Governments prioritize protecting wealth over funding the systems that could hold it accountable.
Claiming wealth taxes are “too subjective” or costly to enforce is a convenient excuse. If we can afford bloated military budgets and corporate bailouts, we can afford evaluators and accountants. Let’s not pretend bureaucracy is the enemy here—it’s the deliberate underfunding of enforcement mechanisms that perpetuates inequality.
And small business owners borrowing from their companies? That’s survival tactics, not privilege. Comparing them to billionaires dodging taxes is disingenuous at best, insulting at worst.