Tax Us

When are we going to see this in India? From today's edition of Times of India ...
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Tax us to fight economic crisis: Rich Germans
Berlin: Some rich Germans have launched a petition to call for the resumption of a wealth tax to help the country bounce back from an economic crisis, because, as one said, he had “a lot of money I do not need”. The text, posted on the internet at www.appell-vermoegensabgabe.de, has been signed by more than 40 people who want to convince the government of newly reelected Chancellor Angela Merkel to raise their taxes. For retired doctor Dieter Kelmkuhl, 66, it is time the wealthy came to the aid of their country. He reckons that if the 2.2 million Germans who have personal fortunes of more than $750,000 paid a tax of five percent this year and next, it would provide the state with 100 billion euros. Kelmkuhl got the idea when Berlin stumped up billions of euros to save banks and give the recession-hit economy a boost. “It made me mad to think that we suddenly found all this money for the banks, money that we did not have before for urgent programmes like education and the environment,” the left-of-centre weekly Die Zeit quoted him as saying. The former doctor would like Germany to have its own version of the the US group United for a Fair Economy (UFA), which includes around 700 wealthy US residents, according to the left-of-centre daily Tagesspiegel.