A plunder requires technique. You cannot simply pluck the rich; you must make sure they cannot run away, cannot channel away, and cannot look away. That is why we have built three walls at once.

Ring-wall one: higher rates inside. Ring-wall two: claims at the border. Ring-wall three: international coordination outside. Whoever sees the three together no longer sees a series of loose measures. He sees a fortress. And whoever looks inside that fortress sees not one tyrant but millions of hands carrying the stones. Our hands.

The first wall — which we raise every evening

The first wall is the most visible. Wealth taxes, higher top rates, the end of flat-rate systems, taxation on "actual return". The instrument is comparable everywhere: from a simple declaration to a complex administration in which the citizen must annually report his real assets, and in which the burden of proof lies with him.

In the Netherlands the new Box 3 system takes effect in 2028. In Germany the DGB plan for two per cent wealth tax per year is circulating. In Spain and Norway the wealth tax is already running. In France and Belgium social levies are rising. The pattern is everywhere the same: broader base, higher effective pressure, more administration.

The productive citizen is no longer taxed on what he earns, but on what he has. That difference is fundamental. Income tax punishes consumption. Wealth tax punishes saving, investing and building up. We have chosen to punish building up. We have chosen against capital formation. That is no technical detail; that is a civilisational choice.

We have not merely voted for this. We have designed it. The Dutch Box 3 reform is written by civil servants of the Ministry of Finance, trained at our universities with our tax money. The German wealth-tax proposals come from the DIW, financed from the German treasury. The French exit tax was worked out by tax specialists at the École Nationale d'Administration, an institute we founded to form our elite.

This is not the work of anonymous forces. It is our own institutions, our own academics, our own civil servants, paid from our own treasury, who design the wall behind which we want to lock up our builders. And they do it with conviction. They believe in it. We convinced them of it. We read the books they wrote. We awarded their lectures. We funded their research.

The second wall — which we have built around them

The second wall is newer and more venomous. No longer "you live here, you pay here", but "you once lived here, you keep paying". The instrument is called exit tax. We have ordered it in every flavour.

Norway levies 37.84 per cent on unrealised share gains at departure, payable after twelve years — even without sale. France drags its claim along for eight to fifteen years. The German Wegzugsteuer already kicks in at a one per cent stake in any company whatever. The Netherlands imposes a conservatory assessment on substantial holdings that remains standing indefinitely. Belgium introduced in April 2026 a trailing window of twenty-four months in which gains follow across the border.

The legal principle behind all these arrangements is the same: the state arrogates to itself the right to tax someone on the basis of where he has been, not where he is. That is the end of the territoriality principle as it has functioned since Westphalia. We learned over four centuries that a human being can detach himself from a country — that the right to leave is a human right — and we have now reversed that decision.

Think for a moment about what this concretely means. The French inventor who wants to live in Switzerland because his research partner sits at ETH is fiscally pursued by the French state for fifteen years. The German Mittelständler who wants to transfer his factory to his daughter in Italy finds his wealth frozen for twelve years by the Wegzugsteuer. The Dutch family-firm owner who wants to move to Spain for his health discovers that his conservatory assessment hangs indefinitely.

We voted for parties that said: "we do not let the rich escape." We received that slogan with applause. We did not ask what it meant in substance. It means: serfdom with a bank account. The Zucman doctrine says it out loud. A country may continue to tax leavers "as residents for five to ten years". That is no longer taxation. That is a new form of slavery, with the smile of morality.

The third wall — which we did not even see

The third wall is the most invisible and therefore the most dangerous. It is called CARF and DAC8. It has been operational since 1 January 2026 in 76 jurisdictions.

CARF is an OECD acronym. DAC8 an acronym of the European Commission. Together they close the last gap in international information exchange. Banks have already been reporting all your accounts to your tax authority since 2017. From 2026 crypto platforms, custodians, brokers and wallet providers also report — automatically, cross-border, in real time.

Alongside this, from mid-2026 the European Digital Identity Wallet comes into mandatory use for financial services. Every transaction above a threshold is traceable to a state-certified identity. Privacy through anonymity — the old model of Swiss coupons, Liechtenstein foundations, Panamanian companies — we ended statutorily in eighteen months.

We wanted this. Over the past ten years we demanded that the rich can no longer channel away. We praised journalists who published offshore lists. We booed politicians who suggested fiscal restraint. We demanded the transparency we now receive.

And we did not notice that the same instrument that makes the rich transparent also makes us transparent. Every transaction. Every account. Every purchase above a threshold. Our own freedom of financial movement has been smoked out along with the hunt on the rich. We built the panopticon we thought only others would sit in. We were mistaken.

Who designs the walls

The ease with which we talk about "Brussels" and "the elite" and "the political class" is a lie we tell ourselves to hide complicity.

Gabriel Zucman is not an anonymous bureaucrat. He is a French economist who teaches at Berkeley, publishes in our journals, speaks at our conferences. We welcomed him in 2008 as a promising doctoral student. We put his books on the bestseller lists. We elevated his proposals to serious policy because we find them sympathetic. He is not them. He is one of us.

Emmanuel Saez is his co-author. Thomas Piketty his predecessor. Marcel Fratzscher in Germany, Esther Duflo at MIT, Branko Milanović in Belgrade and New York. They are all academics with good intentions and well-built analyses. We formed them, financed them, praised them, elevated them to our moral compass. We get the policy we asked them for.

The civil servants in The Hague, Berlin, Paris and Brussels who write the laws studied at our universities, are trained in our traditions. The trade-union leaders who demand the German 350-billion levy represent our workers. The journalists who explain the policy write for our newspapers. The judges who apply the laws are our judges.

And above all this stand we, the voters. Not one emperor, not one party, not one government. An eighty-five million-headed German, a sixty-eight million-headed French, an eighteen million-headed Dutch majority that time and again chooses parties heading in this direction. We are the architect. We are the contractor. We are the mason. And we are the prisoner.

The three exits still open

Within Europe there are still exactly three legal routes for anyone who wants to get his wealth out of the grip. Not four, not ten. Three.

Italy, with the 24-bis regime: a flat tax of 200,000 euros per year on all foreign income, rising to 300,000 in 2026.

Switzerland, with the cantonal lump-sum, still intact in Valais, Ticino and Vaud. Abolished in Zurich and Basel by referendum — by Swiss voters choosing the same pattern as we do.

The United Arab Emirates, outside Europe. Outside our culture. Outside our language. With an autocratic political climate not to everyone's taste, but with zero personal tax and legal room to build a business.

Other exits we have sealed by law within eighteen months. The British non-dom: abolished in April 2025 under a Labour government the British voter chose. The Portuguese NHR: abolished in 2023 under political pressure we exerted. The Spanish Golden Visa: abolished in April 2025. Maltese investment citizenship: struck down by the European Court of Justice in April 2025, on complaints we encouraged.

We have walled up the exits one by one. With our own hands. And we have received applause for it from our own press. We congratulated one another every time an escape route was closed.

Why 2026 to 2028 is the decisive window

The sequence of measures betrays the plan, and we have cheered every step.

First close the escape routes — that happened in 2025. Then activate the information infrastructure — that happened on 1 January 2026. Then tighten the exit taxes — that is happening now, in 2026. Only then introduce the new levies — that is scheduled for 2027 and 2028.

Whoever reacts only in 2028 reacts too late. The claim the Netherlands lays on your private-company shares applies to whoever is a fiscal resident on 1 January 2028. The Norwegian twelve-year clawback applies from the day you leave. The Belgian twenty-four-month window begins running on your deregistration date. Every month of waiting costs a month of room to move.

That is no coincidence. That is design. Not by anonymous forces, but by people we chose to draw up this planning. People who at the next election will ask for our vote again, and to whom we will probably again give our vote.

The moral cover we sell one another

We sell all this to one another under three words: fairness, solidarity, transparency. None of them describes what is really happening.

Fairness would be: equal rules for those who produce and those who consume. What we do is the opposite — those who produce we tax extra, those who consume we spare extra. The civil servant pays no wealth tax because he has no wealth. The pensioner pays no exit tax because he does not leave. The benefit-recipient pays no substantial-holding claim because he has no substantial holding. We have designed a tax system that spares exactly those who receive the most from the state, and hits exactly those who take the least from the state.

Solidarity would be: a voluntary contribution from the strong to the weak. What we do is a compulsory levy under threat of an exit ban. We call that solidarity because we do not want to say out loud what it really is.

Transparency would be: the citizen's right to know what the state does. What we do is the opposite — the state's right to know everything about the citizen. We shifted the emphasis of the word without anyone noticing. Transparency used to be about the government. Now it is about you.

The words have been turned around, and we have applauded the reversal.

Close

The mechanics stand. Three walls, simultaneous, coordinated. We have carried every stone, attended every meeting, ratified every election.

A window of eighteen to twenty-four months in which capital can still choose. After that the system closes, and "your wealth" becomes a term with an asterisk beside it: your wealth, in so far as the state lets you keep it.

In Part III: what happens when we get what we ordered. What our South Africa will look like when the moment comes. And why the people who shouted loudest for the plunder will suffer the hardest.

Because that is the cruellest lesson of history, and the least described: a people that has driven out its builders ends up poorer than its refugees.

PART III OF FOUR