For a few thousand millionaires in Geneva, a regional vote in the next few days could have a lasting impact on their wallets.
The June 18 ballot will ask citizens in the affluent lakeside city-canton whether to slap an extra “solidarity” levy on individuals with more than 3 million francs to their name for the next decade.
“Getting out of the health, social, economic and climate crisis requires action of a massive scale,” the initiative’s text reads. “The middle classes are paying a heavy price for this crisis, and it is therefore fair to ask the multimillionaires for an effort of solidarity.”Cantonal wealth-tax data show that of those, more than 19,000 reach the threshold of being millionaires. A smaller number, somewhere between 4,200 and 10,000, would be affected by the proposal—roughly the top 1 percent.
While the alliance that pushed for the levy did so at a time of massive fiscal spending and public-finance-shortfalls, things have since changed. Geneva reported a record budget surplus of 727 million francs in 2022 due to higher-than-expected tax revenue.
Last year, the city’s richest taxpayers—those with more than 2 million francs in global wealth—paid nearly 700 million francs, or 83 percent of Geneva’s total wealth tax, according to cantonal data.
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