The Swiss Don’t Hate the Rich

Nearly four of five residents reject a 50% inheritance tax on the wealthy.

The right-left wave of hate-the-rich politics that is riding high in the West hit an iceberg on Sunday in Switzerland. Some 78% of voters rejected a 50% inheritance tax on the country’s wealthiest residents.

Voting posters in favor and against an initiative to tax the super-rich to help to finance the country's effort against climate change is seen in a street in Geneva, on November 25.

It’s hard to get that kind of majority these days for endorsing the law of gravity. But a majority of Swiss voters in every canton opposed the referendum sponsored by a group known as the Young Socialists. The tax would have hit all assets exceeding 50 million Swiss francs ($62 million) passed on via inheritance or in gifts.

The sponsors pitched the tax as hitting only some 2,500 people in the country, or the top 0.03% of the population. They also said the money would be used to fight climate change, which is popular in Europe.

But voters across the Continent are figuring out that climate money merely goes toward ideas that do little for the climate. Many of the richest Swiss taxpayers vowed to emigrate if the referendum passed. Switzerland has prospered over many decades as a refuge for the wealthy looking to escape punitive taxation.

“Voters have clearly rejected a risky fiscal policy experiment,” said Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter after the vote. “Such a tax would have thrown our tax system out of balance and would have damaged Switzerland’s attractiveness.” Countries in the Middle East and Asia like Singapore would be happy to welcome the fleeing Swiss rich.

Various forms of wealth tax are gaining support in France and such progressive American states as California. The Swiss public has offered voters in those places a lesson in economic common sense.