One wealth tax after another
It isn’t just people in the UK that know the game is up for economies and political systems that underfund our hospitals, schools and communities, while making the rich richer. Increasingly we’re seeing calls for wealth taxes across the world.
Over the last few years, you’ve helped us shoot wealth taxes to the top of the UK’s political and public debate. And now from Denmark to the USA, and France to Singapore, wealth taxes are seen as popular, vote-winning solutions for tackling inequality and improving people’s lives. Even experts at the UN are calling for a global move towards taxing wealth more, to secure a just and sustainable future.
What to lift from Denmark
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is one of those backing Wealth Taxes, as a solution to rising inequality. Ahead of Denmark’s 26 March election, Frederiksen has made reinstating the country’s wealth tax, which was abolished in 1997, a central pillar of her campaign. A platform of taxing the rich to invest in first-class public services to meet the needs of people across Denmark, that is expected to help secure her party a comfortable victory.
The new 0.5% tax will target those 22,000 Danes with assets exceeding 25 million kroner— that’s about £2 million. It is expected to raise the equivalent of around £1 billion a year, that’s the salaries of about 10,000 nurses for the Danish National Health Service.
The UK’s Labour government recently made headlines after it published plans to adopt immigration policies inspired by Denmark. But if they’re going to take a leaf out of the Danish book, they should really look at how a wealth tax is viewed as a proper solution, rather than continuing down a path that ignores the real changes that will improve people’s lives.
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The land of the free (and the home of most billionaires)
As we covered in last week’s analysis of the 2026 Forbes Billionaire list, there is no greater accumulation of extreme wealth than in the United States. It should be unsurprising then that interest in wealth taxation is bubbling up. At the federal level, Senator Bernie Sanders and representative Ro Khanna have proposed a billionaire tax that would see the very richest Americans (those with $1bn or more) pay a 5% tax on their entire net worth.
The proposed tax would affect just under 1000 people but, such is the scale of extreme wealth in the US, it would raise an estimated $4.4 trillion in a decade. The revenue would be used to redress inequality by giving every member of a household less than $150k a year, a $3,000 check per person, in addition to earmarked investments in healthcare, affordable housing and education.
Impatient for national action, in California a union-created ‘emergency wealth tax’ proposal is aiming to levy a one time tax bill at the same level— 5% on residents with more than $1bn. Some of the State’s richest and greediest residents have thrown their toys out the pram, with billionaires spending a reported $35m on campaign efforts to stymie progress, to undermine the billionaire tax, and protect a warped economy that only works in their interests.
The Lion’s share
In Singapore too, Wealth Taxes are on the agenda. During the 2026 Budget debate, spurred on by a new report from the Ministry of Finance which found wealth inequality to be greater than income inequality in Singapore, members of the Singaporean parliament called on the government to tackle inequality through taxing the assets of the wealthy.
Singaporean MP Louis Chua said “This approach could be explored to ensure that those who benefit most from Singapore’s security and conducive environment contribute their fair share, even if their declared income or assets are difficult to fully ascertain.”
So, it’s clear whether it’s in the UK, Denmark, Singapore or the United States, wealth taxes are being viewed as a crucial part of the response to the global crisis of inequality. The level of wealth the super-rich hold has become unimaginable to most of us, but the impacts of the imbalance are felt by all of us— sky-high rents and mortgages, ridiculous utility bills, shrinking supermarket products but swelling receipts. Because the cash from our wallets is lining the pockets of the ultra-rich.
Most people instinctively understand that Wealth Taxes are the simplest and most effective way to tackle this injustice. But the rich and powerful have no intention of giving up their obscene wealth and privilege. That’s why the media companies and social platforms they own churn out endless content pointing fingers elsewhere—stoking division, fuelling hate, racism and resentment, to keep communities distracted while they cash in.