Do you know what it says on the Rosetta Stone? I only found out after I started my tax justice advocacy work. A tax expert told me that its text is, among a lot of praise for the newly crowned King (Ptolemy V r. 204-181 BC), about tax. More specifically, about tax exemption and who should be exempt. Interesting, right? Because it tells us the same tale we are used to hearing, from the same kind of bards. 

It goes as follows: priests, as a class, should be exempt. They are doing their duty to the gods so they should not have to pay tax like the rest of the people do. The newly crowned king relies on the priests who can attest to his being truly an incarnation of God, born to rule. The powerful elite of the time, those in direct contact – so they claim – with the authority of all authorities should not be bothered by taxation. And of course, the priests understood the power of the written word and wanted it carved in stone, for all to see. Power protects power.  

Imagine the same thing today. Imagine the powerful social class writing down their idea of who should be taxed. Actually, you don’t have to: look up the tax laws of your country or any democratic country. Look up a financial report from your government telling you where the majority of the state budget comes from. It’s labour and consumption taxes. Now, who pays them? Out of whose pockets are we used to getting most public money and who on the other hand won’t contribute proportionate to their wealth or ability? What does not get taxed or sees reduction after reduction, cut after cut in tax rates? It’s wealth and inherited wealth, the source of power of the richest percentage of any country.  

Fascinating how things have hardly changed, isn’t it?  

Of course, it’s not the priests who are the powerful social class nowadays. They don’t have the status of exclusive interpreters of the universe anymore but share that power with a variety of scientists and experts. Instead of investigating the clerics and their transformed status in society, I want to look at another source of power. Mine. 

Or rather the power of my social class, the owning and ruling class that I also refer to as the richest one percent. We own almost everything. And property is a right that grants a private person incredible power without having to face constraints of the democratic kind – that’s only for publicly owned stuff. But when you own something privately, it can mean the same as owning it intimately. I know, I was born a Ultra High Net Worth Individual (UHNWI) with a net wealth of over $30 million – at least that’s the definition. It clearly lets you know, I am literally worth more than you. Personally, I find this disgusting. But also, I struggle with the fact that UHNWIs like me are socialised to bypass democracy and use our power for whatever we consider good or worthy. No democracy gets to mess with that. No tax for public benefit gets to threaten our private wealth and our private vision of the world. The result: we live in a so-called polycrisis, most of which is a direct consequence of the very structures that make me so powerful. There is patriarchy effectively keeping rich men in power through dynastic wealth transfers, there is capitalism effectively ensuring that inequality increases, further concentrating private mega wealth, there is colonialism effectively excluding non-white people from wealth and therefore power, there is meritocracy shielding the behaviour of wealthy people and claiming that nepo-babies born into management deserve to spend their fortunes on yachts and private jets, effectively combusting the planet we all live on. 

‘The richest one percent more or less owns your life and all the choices you can make’

What I am trying to tell you is simple. We’re all connected through the systems in which we lead our lives. And those systems are, for the majority – though not always for my class – based on laws, regulations, rights, duties, and stories. But we don’t need a new narrative. We have to edit the ones we’re in and reclaim taxes as the democratic tool for redistribution that they are. No philanthropy can replace that.  

Let’s assume you are one among the other 99 percent, employed, earning an upper middle class salary. Perhaps you can even count yourself among the richest ten percent of your country.  

You might ask yourself: what does the private property of the richest one percent have to do with you? Don’t they pay more tax than you? Don’t they donate their wealth? Didn’t they earn it through hard work?   

Those questions seem sensible, not complicated political babble but good old rational thinking. They feel like they’re yours, they must be. 

But they’re not. Can you hear the bards?  

My class owns most major media outlets in any country, selling you the news and stories we like with varying degrees of editorial influence. My class has offices full of lawyers on their payroll to write the financial laws that suit our interests best and to use every legal loophole in order to maximise financial return and minimise tax. My class owns the companies like the one paying your salary, while the profit created through your labour goes to the owners, so really you pay us. We own houses like the one you own, you bought it from us. Or, we own the mortgages you use to buy the house. It’s really the same as if you rented or bought directly from us, but we don’t need to own the house when we can own the mortgage, or both. In the end, you’re paying us. 

The richest one percent more or less owns your life and all the choices you can make because we choose what goes on the platter for you to pick from. Meanwhile, we don’t have to work for money because we are wealthy, but we can if we want to. We don’t have to pay tax, unless we want to work, and then we can ask our lawyers to get out the toolkit and effectively shrink them. We can live wherever we want and move across the globe with little to no restraints. We can even choose to lend our millions to governments across the globe, effectively collecting your tax money which is used to pay us revenue on our loan. And yes, we spend money on philanthropy. But only on our favourite causes, supporting the organisations, groups, people, sometimes even countries, we consider worthy. And, of course, nobody gets to check the money behind it – philanthropic endowment is incredibly untransparent and hardly ever mission aligned. It’s not rare that revenue from investment in fossil fuels is used to finance climate solutions – ironic, isn’t it? 

But that’s not the story you’re being told, is it? You’re being told that we give you work, not that you give us profit. That capital has to abide by the laws, not that laws have to accommodate capital. That taxes on wealth harm the economy, but the London School of Economics debunked that myth in a study conducted over 50 years in 18 OECD countries, finding no beneficial effects to cuts on wealth taxes whatsoever. That philanthropy saves the planet, not that it fails to do so in spite or because of billions in capital invested for philanthropic spending.  

Why are the stories against wealth taxation so much more prominent than those in favour? 

Because whatever news or stories you consume is already biased. How facts are mixed and matched, how narratives are shaped, how often they’re repeated, and at what time, and on what page of the newspaper, or in whatever media outlet – all of that is biased.  

‘History is a resourceful ally. She tells us that wealth used to be taxed, that inequality used to be lower, and that it’s therefore not only possible but recommendable to redistribute wealth through tax.’

But history is a resourceful ally. She tells us that wealth used to be taxed, that inequality used to be lower, and that it’s therefore not only possible but recommendable to redistribute wealth through tax. She tells us where the wealth really comes from: land and goods and labour which did not originally belong to anyone are the origins of wealth. The wealthy are merely those who put their names on it all. We need democracy to harness and distribute power and a complex system to organise our rights and duties into laws – wealth depends on it as much as everything else and should contribute accordingly. 

Private philanthropy can’t compete in raising living standards with democratic governments spending public money, which is the only redistributive force that is democratically validated. The people should be the sovereign in a democracy, not just the richest.  

Private wealth through ownership is an unchecked and influential power, and it invites us, its holders, to hoard and abuse it in order to get our will. But that’s not democracy. That’s oligarchy or plutocracy. Unless we redistribute wealth as we distribute power in a democracy, that is, equally and equitably, we will remain in social conflict and sentence billions of people to die in scarcity while the wealth of this world rots in the hands of those telling you they are the closest to our new god: money.  

‘Democracy is a reminder that just because someone’s in power, it doesn’t mean they should be in charge.’

You will hear all sorts of stories regarding taxes. Listen to them. To all of them. And check. Take that time and check them for the questions of power. Does the person telling you the story have a dog in this fight? Is it a person of power, specifically of unchecked power (that is, through private ownership of large companies, through white privilege, through cis-hetero-patriarchy, etc.)? Where does the story come from? Who owns the media outlet? Follow the money. 

I am invested in this because I know that democracy grants us an unkind freedom. It makes us aware of our connection to others and reflects back to us constantly that we can’t always get what we want just because we want it. We must be mindful of others, check in with their needs and provide a system of public services and infrastructure that’s accessible to each and everyone of us. Out of principle, not goodwill. Democracy is a reminder that just because someone’s in power, it doesn’t mean they should be in charge. So let’s carve that in a rock, translate it into every language, and give tax storytelling a spin history won’t forget.

Guest editor: Marlene Engelhorn. Marlene Engelhorn is a multi-millionaire heiress, member of Guerrilla Foundation Funders Circle, and co-founder of taxmenow.