The case against billionaires is building and there’s a growing call for these homegrown money-making machines to cough up a lot more in tax. And it comes as The Daily Telegraph says the Oxfam Australia chief executive Lyn Morgain labelled Australia’s wealth gap “obscene”!

Call me an historian but when I see a campaign to slug billionaires with a special tax because of their success with money, I can’t help but recall how another billionaire and Nine founder Kerry Packer responded to a question about the tax he paid in November 1991, before the House of Representatives Select Committee on Print Media. This is what he said: “I am not evading tax in any way, shape or form. Now of course I am minimising my tax and if anybody in this country doesn’t minimise their tax, they want their heads read because as a government I can tell you you’re not spending it that well that we should be donating extra!”

Whether billionaires are evading or minimising tax, there’s a movement to slug them harder with a special tax.

According to the AFR’s latest look at our rich list, we have 150 Aussies with a billion dollars plus of wealth, with mining magnate Gina Rinehart topping the list on $40 billion, followed by legendary property builder Harry Triguboff on $26.5 billion.

By the way, these lucky people can be big donors to good causes. Of course, there’s no list that tells us that, and they still provide a lot of tax dollars via their businesses that buy goods and services, pay wages, GST and company tax. And they do also pay income tax, but sure, they do use smart accountants and lawyers to minimise the tax they pay.

But what’s brewing isn’t just a tax vendetta on billionaires because Oxfam says their research shows “74 per cent of Australians supported a wealth tax on people worth more than $50m”. So, it’s a potential tax witch hunt on anyone worth more than $50 million. And if this includes the value of family homes, some ‘lucky’ homeowners in Point Piper, Darling Point, Mosman, Toorak, Peppermint Grove Perth and the Gold Coast, could be captured by this wealth tax.

The demand for the rich to pay more is global nowadays, with the ABC’s Gareth Hutchins reporting that “…if the world’s 3,000 billionaires had to pay a minimum amount of tax each year, equal to 2 per cent of their wealth, global tax revenues would be up to $US250 billion ($380 billion) higher, a new report says.”

(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-27/tax-billionaires-minimum-tax-2-per-cent-gabriel-zucman-g20/104023796 )

Locally, the Greens are campaigning on a 6% annual wealth tax on billionaires. And they want a tax on mega-profits for big companies earning more than $100 million annually. This is how they’re selling their idea: “By making mining billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share, we can build a better life for all of us by having mental health and dental in Medicare, building affordable housing and raising the rate of JobSeeker.”

The Greens have had the Parliamentary Budget Office look at their billionaire’s tax and it showed an annual revenue gain of around $11 billion. But the Greens’ numbers look bigger, with their political blurbs saying that “this tax will raise $53 billion over the next three years to invest in the jobs and public services Australia needs.”

History says that the Greens won’t get their way and a tax on Australians with net wealth over $50 million would be a vote-killer at an election. Meanwhile, killer taxes on big companies could hit share prices and super balances, as big super funds invest heavily in our mega-profit companies.

That said, billionaires could easily see some measures show up in coming years to rake more taxes off them, but before doing that, we should be trying to get the big overseas tech and other high growth companies to pay their fair share of tax first. And that wouldn’t kill any votes!