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The economist billionaires fear: this is how we get a wealth tax

Garys Economicsenglishenpublicupdated Jul 4, 2026, 14:19

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Introduction to Gabriel Zucman

The host presents Gabriel Zucman as a leading economist on inequality, billionaire wealth, tax avoidance, and the practical design of wealth taxes.
Zucman introduces his roles at the Paris School of Economics, UC Berkeley, and the International Tax Observatory, focusing on inequality, multinational tax avoidance, and the taxation of the super rich.
He argues that billionaire wealth has exploded since the 1980s, accelerated after the 2008 financial crisis, and risen by about 40% globally in the last two years, increasing billionaire political influence.

Zucman says living in the San Francisco Bay Area exposed him to extreme inequality, with tech billionaires living near widespread homelessness.
Trump's 2016 election and the Democratic Party's failure to offer ambitious inequality solutions pushed him toward studying inequality and developing policy responses.
He sees empirical research, transparency, and data as the foundation for understanding inequality and designing effective public policy.

Zucman agrees that academic economics long neglected inequality, especially during the Cold War period when efficiency dominated the discipline.
He says inequality has slowly returned to the center of economics, helped by figures such as Tony Atkinson and the tradition of empirical social science.
He advises young people who want to study inequality to pursue it and help expand the field from within academia.

Zucman says social scientists should not only establish facts but also communicate them publicly and propose solutions to social problems.
He argues that findings about tax evasion and effective tax rates are essential democratic knowledge and should not remain confined to experts.
He rejects a technocratic approach, saying researchers should feed public debate while citizens decide through democratic deliberation and voting.
He believes researchers who propose policies should also defend and explain them in public discussion.

The proposed tax creates a principle that extremely wealthy people, suggested as those with more than 100 million in wealth, must pay an unavoidable minimum tax each year.
Zucman argues the minimum must be based on wealth, not taxable income, because billionaires can legally report little or no income while still having enormous economic resources.
He proposes a 2% minimum tax on wealth as a floor to ensure billionaires pay at least comparable effective tax rates to the rest of the population.
He says higher rates could be justified, but the 2% proposal is designed as a minimal standard that broad democratic societies should be able to support.

The proposal was developed in 2024 when Brazil held the G20 presidency and wanted new ideas for international tax cooperation.
Zucman compares the billionaire minimum tax to the 2021 international minimum tax on multinational companies, arguing a similar principle can apply to the super rich.
The French National Assembly passed a 2% minimum wealth tax bill in February 2025 for people with more than 100 million euros, though it was later blocked by the Senate.
He predicts wealth taxation could spread internationally like the progressive income tax did in the early 20th century.

Zucman says the truly radical situation is that the super rich can live in a parallel tax-free society despite benefiting from public infrastructure and collective wealth creation.
Research across about ten countries shows working and middle classes often pay around 40% to 50% of income in total taxes, while billionaires often pay around 20% to 25%.
In the UK, he cites the Sunday Times Rich List showing the richest roughly 200 families rising from wealth equal to 5% of GDP in 1989 to about 25% recently.
He distinguishes middle-class wealth, which provides security, from billionaire wealth, which becomes power over media, markets, politics, and ideology.
He warns that concentrated wealth creates a feedback loop where wealth produces power, which then produces more wealth, threatening democratic equality.

Zucman says past European wealth taxes often failed because they were badly designed with exemptions and deductions that allowed avoidance.
He argues a modern wealth tax should start at a very high threshold, such as more than 100 million pounds in the UK, and include no exemptions or deductions.
He estimates this would affect roughly 1,000 UK families and be more effective than older wealth taxes.
To address tax exile, he proposes that countries continue taxing extremely wealthy long-term residents for several years after they move abroad.
He says the UK could treat emigrating ultra-wealthy individuals as tax residents for five or ten years after departure, reducing incentives to move solely for tax reasons.

Zucman rejects the claim that academics do not support billionaire wealth taxation, saying there is broad support among economists and the public.
He cites a July 2025 Le Monde op-ed supporting the 2% minimum wealth tax, signed by seven Nobel Prize winners.
He also cites support from economists such as former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard.
He frames the tax as a matter of equality before the law: billionaires should not pay less than nurses, teachers, and ordinary workers.

Zucman says the world is at the beginning of an international movement and needs one country to lead by example on taxing the super rich.
He estimates a 2% UK tax on the wealth of the super rich could raise about 15 billion pounds per year.
He argues that if one country proves the policy works, many others will follow quickly.
The host closes by recommending Zucman's book, We Need to Tax Billionaires, as a short explanation of the practical details behind the proposal.

Young people who want to study inequality should pursue it and help build the field within academia.
A country such as the UK should lead by example by introducing a tax on the super rich and demonstrating that it can raise revenue without catastrophe.
Rory Stewart should read more about the international evidence and speak with academics who support the billionaire minimum tax proposal.