How to tax the powerful and the sophisticated?

Wealthy individuals and powerful organisations have the resources to successfully avoid taxation via a myriad of accounting tricks. However, without a fair tax contribution from the top accumulators of our society, our democracies will fail to maintain economic and social stability. Thus, tax authorities need to come up with new ideas regarding taxation of the powerful and sophisticated. The present chapter undertakes a short review on the history of taxation, summarises different forms of taxation (recurrent, incidental, seigniorage, tribute, and accounting-based tax) and presents examples of how plutocrats were taxed in the past. Based on this review, the tribute tax is suggested as an old strategy for the new plutocrats of today. We present a first outline of such a new tribute tax and discuss necessary boundary conditions and possible challenges.