Are millionaires the rats of the economy?

"When a country begins to fall into economic and political difficulty, wealthy people are often the first to ship their money to safer havens abroad. The rich don't always emigrate along with their money, but when they do it is an even more telling sign of trouble ahead," wrote R Sharma. Out of a total of 15 million millionaires in the world, "nearly 1,00,000 changed their country of domicile last year". "In 2017, the largest exoduses came out of Turkey, where a stunning 12% of the millionaire population emigrated, and Venezuela. As if on cue, the Turkish lira is now in free fall. There were also significant migrations out of India under the tightening grip of its tax authorities..." So what? When rich people flee with their wealth they reduce the wealth of the country and "India in 2017 suffered a net loss of 7,000, or 2%, of its millionaire population". Warren Buffett has a personal fortune of $83 billion, more than twice that of Mukesh Ambani, India's richest man. His company, Berkshire Hathaway "is sitting on a whopping $116 billion in cash and short-term US treasury bills", which is more than the cash holdings and investments of all the top 200 companies, excluding banks and financial institutions, listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. "Berkshire's market valuation at $470 billion is nearly 21% of India's GDP." Those who file tax returns, especially salaried workers, have to pay higher taxes every year. Corporate taxes were reduced by 5% for companies earning up to Rs 2.5 billion, wrote Pai and Krishnan. There is a surcharge of 12% on the tax of any company earning more than Rs 100 million and foreign companies still have to pay tax at 40%, with a surcharge of 5% on those earning more than Rs 100 million. The same authors describe how unjust taxes are claimed against taxpayers, over 70% of which were rejected on appeal proving they were wrong. India's tax to GDP ratio is quite respectable when compared to other emerging nations and has been rising. If millionaires are assumed to be successful entrepreneurs then their flight is more than just the loss of a few million dollars. A study by Hvide and Oyer in Finland showed that those entrepreneurs who followed their fathers in the same sort of business were more likely to survive and have more employees, wrote N Rajadhyaksha. This advantage persisted even where their fathers died before they became entrepreneurs, which means it was not due to networking but because of the knowledge gained around the dinner table. Surcharge and cess collected for specific purposes are used for revenue expenditure, wrote VA Nageswaran. We need to keep our millionaires for the wealth they generate. Our loss is gain for others.