Wealth taxes are a symptom of a broken tax system. If you let someone get to hundreds of billions in net worth and then realize they haven’t been appropriately paying back into the system, it’s already too late. Like the article says they can simply say “no” in a variety of ways, from fighting in court to simply leaving.
Norway, Spain, and Switzerland have wealth (net worth) taxes. Why don't we see the same outrage from rich people living there? Also, most billionaires get rich with equity in a business that they built. How else can we tax that net worth?
Actually, in Norway there is some outrage. Many people with (a lot of) money move to Switzerland. There is also the issue that startups are being taxed on "paper money" — the value of the firm on paper based on expected future income — even though they have not yet started earning money.
From what I can find, the top wealth tax rate in Norway is about 1.1%. That seems pretty dumb to leave your home country to avoid paying 1.1% tax per year. For entrepreneurs that now have enormous equity (100s of millions of Euros), my sympathy is low. They can easy sell a tiny fraction of their equity to investors to pay the wealth tax.
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