Mobility Responses to Special Tax Regimes for the Super-Rich: Evidence from Switzerland

We use a novel rich-list dataset to estimate the sensitivity of the location choices of super-rich foreigners to a special tax regime, under which wealthy foreigners are taxed based on their living expenses, rather than their true income and wealth. We are the first to show that, when some Swiss cantons repealed this controversial policy, their stock of super-rich foreigners dropped by 43% as a consequence. We find no response for the Swiss super-rich, who were unaffected by the policy change. The implied wealth and income tax mobility elasticities range between 28.4–32.2 and 1.4–1.5, respectively.