Colombia extends its wealth tax

Colombia is one of the world’s most unequal societies. Last week, the government of Juan Manuel Santos, who began his second term as president in August, announced the extension of a wealth tax introduced in 2002 to pay for the mounting costs of the country’s 50 year drug-fuelled guerrilla war.

“In that sense, we are actually ahead of the curve of what Piketty proposes,” says Mr Cárdenas.

…“This touches only 50,000 Colombians out of the entire population” of 48m people, he says, “that is less than 1 per cent of the population.”

President Santos himself is a product of that 1 per cent. A US-educated economist and member of a wealthy family of the Colombian establishment, he heads up a centrist administration, not a Venezuela-style leftist regime.

Mr Santos has increased rates for various tranches of the levy, in some cases by 50 per cent. Those with a net worth of between $510,000 and $1.5m must pay a 0.4 per cent tax. The rate rises to 2.25 per cent for net worth above $4m. That applies to 45,000 businesses and about 1,000 individuals, Mr Cárdenas said.

Only about five percent of Columbians actually pay into the standard income tax system.  The FT piece by Andres Schipani is here.

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