SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
gabriel zucman
When It Comes to Taxing the Rich, France’s National Assembly Is Leading the Way
Assembly lawmakers have just given a green light to the world’s first significant tax on billionaire wealth at a time when the most powerful nation on Earth—the United States—is moving in the exact opposite direction.
Mar 12, 2025
Nine of the world’s 10 wealthiest billionaires now call the United States home. The remaining one? He lives in France. And that one—Bernard Arnault, the 76-year-old who owns just about half the world’s largest maker of luxury goods—is now feeling some heat.
What has Arnault and his fellow French deep pockets beginning to sweat? Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly have just given a green light to the world’s first significant tax on billionaire wealth.
“The tax impunity of billionaires,” the measure’s prime sponsor, the Ecologist Party’s Eva Sas, exulted last month, “is over.”
The annual tax on grand fortune that the assembly’s lawmakers have passed, says the UC-Berkeley analyst Gabriel Zucman, represents “amazing progress” that has the potential to set a bold new global precedent.
Sas had good reason for exulting. In the French National Assembly debate over whether to start levying a 2% annual tax on wealth over 100 million euros—the equivalent of $108 million—the leader of the chamber’s hands-off-our-rich lawmakers introduced 26 amendments designed to undercut this landmark tax-the-rich initiative. All 26 of these amendments failed.
But France’s 4,000 or so deep pockets worth over 100 million euros—the nation’s richest 0.01%—don’t have to open up their checkbooks just quite yet. The French Senate’s right-wing-majority has no intention of backing the National Assembly’s new levy, and, even if the Senate did, France’s highest court would most likely dismiss the measure.
French president Emmanuel Macron, for his part, has spent most of the last decade cutting corporate tax rates and axing taxes on investment assets. And his budget minister has blasted last month’s National Assembly tax-the-rich move as both “confiscatory and ineffective.”
None of this opposition, believes the French economist who inspired the National Assembly’s new tax move, should give us cause to doubt that move’s significance. The annual tax on grand fortune that the assembly’s lawmakers have passed, says the UC-Berkeley analyst Gabriel Zucman, represents “amazing progress” that has the potential to set a bold new global precedent.
What makes the National Assembly’s tax legislation even more significant? That tax-the-rich vote has come at a time when the most powerful nation on Earth—the United States—is moving in the exact opposite direction. The new Trump administration, with the help of the world’s single richest individual, is now busily hollowing out the tax-the-rich capacity of the Internal Revenue Service.
President Donald Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, had actually made some serious moves to enhance that IRS capacity, hiring—before he left office—thousands of new tax staffers. But those new hires, notes a ProPublica analysis, have now started going through Elon Musk’s “DOGE” meat grinder.
Team Trump’s ultimate goal at the tax agency? To use layoffs, attrition, and buyouts to cut the overall IRS workforce “by as much as half,” The Associated Pressreports. A reduction in force that severe, charges former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, would render the IRS “dysfunctional.”
The prime target of the ongoing IRS cutbacks: the agency’s Large Business and International office, the IRS division that specializes in auditing America’s highest-income individuals and the companies they run.
On average, researchers have concluded over recent years, every dollar the IRS spends auditing America’s richest ends up returning as much as $12 in new tax revenue. The current gutting of the agency’s most skilled staffers, tax analysts have told ProPublica, “will mean corporations and wealthy individuals face far less scrutiny when they file their tax returns, leading to more risk-taking and less money flowing into the U.S. treasury.”
Moves to “hamstring the IRS,” sums up former IRS Commissioner Koskinen, amount to “just a tax cut for tax cheats.”
Donald Trump, agrees the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s Amy Hanauer, “is waging economic war on the vast majority of Americans, pushing to further slash taxes on the wealthiest and corporations, while sapping the public services that keep our communities strong.”
Public services like Social Security. Elon Musk has lately taken to deriding America’s most beloved federal program as a “Ponzi scheme,” and the Social Security Administration’s new leadership team, suitably inspired, has just announced plans to trim some 7,000 jobs from an agency “already at a 50-year staffing low.”
A vicious economic squeeze on America’s seniors. A massive tax-time giveaway for America’s richest. How can we start reversing those sorts of inequality-inducing dynamics? The veteran retirement analyst Teresa Ghilarducci has one fascinating suggestion.
Any individual’s annual earnings over $176,100 will this year, Ghilarducci points out, face not a dime of Social Security tax. A CEO making millions of dollars a year will pay no more in Social Security tax than a civil engineer making a mere $176,100.
If lawmakers removed that arbitrary $176,100 Social Security tax cap and subjected more categories of income—like capital gains—to Social Security tax, Ghilarducci reflects, we could ensure Social Security’s viability for decades to come and even make giant strides to totally ending poverty among all Social Security recipients.
And if we had just merely eliminated the Social Security tax cap on annual earnings in 2023, the most recent stats show, America’s 229 top earners would have paid more into Social Security that year than the 77% of American workers who took home under $57,000.
We could also apply Ghilarducci’s zesty tax-the-rich spirit to the broader global economy, as the inspiration behind France’s recent tax-the-rich moves, the economist Gabriel Zucman, has just observed in a piece that cleverly suggests “tariffs for oligarchs.’
The fortunes of our super rich, Zucman reminds us, “depend on access to global markets,” a reality that could leave these rich vulnerable at tax time. Nations subject to Trump’s new tariffs, he goes on to explain, could retaliate by taking an imaginative approach to taxing Corporate America’s super rich.
“In other words,” Zucman notes, “if Tesla wants to sell cars in Canada and Mexico, Elon Musk—Tesla’s primary shareholder—should be required to pay taxes in those jurisdictions.”
Taking that approach “could trigger a virtuous cycle.” The super rich would soon find relocating either their firms or their fortunes to low-tax jurisdictions a pointless endeavor. Any savings they might reap from such moves would get offset by the higher taxes they would owe in nations with major markets.
The current economic “race to the bottom,” Zucman quips, could essentially become “a race to the top” that “neutralizes tax competition, fights inequality, and protects our planet.”
Lawmakers in France have just shown they’re willing to start racing in that top-oriented direction. May their inspiration spread.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Top Economist Has Winning Idea for Trump's Trade War: Tariffs for US Oligarchs
"If it's a trade war Trump wants, consumers in Mexico, Canada, Europe, and beyond should unite to ensure that Musk and his fellow oligarchs feel the cost."
Mar 03, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump weighed 25% tariffs he plans to impose on Canada and Mexico on Monday, with the White House sending mixed messages in recent days about when the levies will go into effect, a top progressive economist has proposed foreign countries should respond to "the trade war Trump seems determined to stoke" by targeting the "Achilles heel" embedded in the Trump administration.
"Mexico, Canada, and Europe have leverage," wrote Gabriel Zucman, director of the E.U. Tax Observatory, in a column Friday, pointing to the country's "highly internationalized oligarchy: a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals whose fortunes depend on access to global markets."
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick indicated Monday morning that Trump has yet to decide whether tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports—including produce, lumber, vehicles, and electronics—will go forward just after midnight on Tuesday as previously planned; the president has also recently said the tariffs could be delayed until April 2.
But Zucman wrote that whenever the policy does enter force, Canada, Mexico, and any other countries affected "should retaliate by taxing U.S. oligarchs."
Powerful business owners like Tesla CEO Elon Musk—now also spearheading Trump's gutting of federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg all rely on markets outside of the U.S. to enrich their companies, which "gives foreign governments influence," Zucman continued.
"If Tesla wants to sell cars in Canada and Mexico, Elon Musk—Tesla's primary shareholder—should be required to pay taxes in those jurisdictions," he wrote. "Of course, this strategy is explicitly extraterritorial, since it applies tax obligations on foreign actors in exchange for access to local markets. But rather than fearing extraterritoriality, countries should embrace it as a tool for enforcing minimum standards, curbing inequality, preventing tax evasion, and promoting sustainability."
Tariffs on oligarchs could fight against Trump's attacks on environmental regulations, push for tax giveaways to billionaires at the cost of crucial public services, and advocacy for re-segregating workplaces, suggested Zucman, while shifting "the economic conflict from a battle between countries—which fuels nationalist tensions and economic retaliation—to one between consumers and oligarchs."
Countries could also "collect taxes that multinationals have dodged elsewhere, gradually eroding the appeal of tax competition" and triggering a "virtuous cycle," added the economist, who focuses on wealth inequality and international tax policy.
With tariffs on oligarchs in place, he said, firms would no longer be incentivized to move to countries that hand out corporate tax breaks because their savings would be offset by the tariffs levied by countries with large markets.
Governments have been accused in taking part in a "race to the bottom" as they try to attract large multinational companies run by some of the richest people in the world, with huge tax breaks that weaken "national safety nets, [kill] jobs by subsidising capital at the expense of labor, [allow] elites to escape the rule of law, and [reduce] productivity and economic growth," as the Tax Justice Network wrote in a 2020 report.
With tariffs for oligarchs, said Zucman "the race to the bottom would soon be replaced by a race to the top."
While the first weeks of Trump's second term in the White House have raised fears over a looming trade war, attacks on immigrants and transgender Americans, mass firings of federal workers, and the United States' withdrawal from international agreements and organizations, Zucman said the Trump presidency "also presents an opportunity."
"This is a moment to rethink international economic relations, calmly but radically," wrote Zucman. "The best response is a new global economic framework that neutralizes tax competition, fights inequality, and protects our planet. Under such a framework, importing countries would enforce tax justice beyond their borders, ensuring that multinational corporations and their billionaire owners pay their fair share."
"If it's a trade war Trump wants," he said, "consumers in Mexico, Canada, Europe, and beyond should unite to ensure that Musk and his fellow oligarchs feel the cost."
Keep ReadingShow Less
G20 Leaders Reach 'Landmark Commitment' for Global Tax on Ultrarich
"Now is the time to turn words into action and launch an inclusive international negotiation, extending beyond G20 countries, on the reform of the taxation of the superrich," said economist Gabriel Zucman.
Nov 19, 2024
Acknowledging that "the era of the billionaire" is still in full swing across the globe, economic justice advocates on Tuesday applauded a "landmark commitment" by G20 leaders at the group's annual summit in Rio de Janeiro, where delegates agreed to cooperate on efforts to ensure the richest households in the world are taxed fairly.
The final communiqué out of the G20 Summit includes a commitment from 19 countries, the European Union, and the African Union, to "engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed."
"Cooperation could involve exchanging best practices, encouraging debates around tax principles, and devising anti-avoidance mechanisms, including addressing potentially harmful tax practices," reads the communiqué. "We look forward to continuing to discuss these issues in the G20 and other relevant forums, counting on the technical inputs of relevant international organizations, academia, and experts."
The final text was brokered by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, and the E.U. Tax Observatory noted that Argentina's right-wing president, Javier Milei, "failed to convince other G20 countries to block the communiqué."
The meeting took place less than a year after economist Gabriel Zucman, director of the E.U. Tax Observatory, published a report titledA Blueprint for a Coordinated Minimum Effective Taxation Standard for Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individuals, which informed G20 finance discussions leading up to the summit.
"A minimum tax on billionaires equal to 2% of their wealth would raise $200-$250 billion per year globally from about 3,000 taxpayers; extending the tax to centimillionaires would add $100-$140 billion," said Zucman, a leading expert on tax avoidance and reducing inequality, in the report.
Billionaires' effective tax rate is currently equivalent to 0.3% of their wealth, requiring them to pay a far lower rate than middle-class taxpayers.
Zucman hailed the agreement out of the summit in Rio de Janeiro as a "historic decision" and said concrete action by the world's governments must follow.
"Now is the time to turn words into action and launch an inclusive international negotiation, extending beyond G20 countries, on the reform of the taxation of the superrich," said Zucman.
Along with Milei, the Biden administration pushed back this year as the G20 weighed Zucman's tax proposal. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen toldThe Wall Street Journal in May that the "notion of some common global arrangement for taxing billionaires with proceeds redistributed in some way—we're not supportive of a process to try to achieve that. That's something we can't sign on to."
As Common Dreamsreported Tuesday, the U.S. is one of eight countries that are contributing to an international loss of $492 billion in taxes each year as multinational corporations and ultrawealthy individuals underpay. The eight countries—which also include Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the U.K.—oppose a United Nations tax convention.
Jenny Ricks, general secretary of the Fight Inequality Alliance, said that particularly with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump set to take office in January, "we live in the era of the billionaire."
"We need to move to the era of the 99%," said Ricks. "This shift won't come easily. The U.S. elections have shown how the superrich can use their wealth and power to influence policies and shape the outcomes of elections. Leaders like Trump in the U.S. and Javier Milei in Argentina are actively working to derail international cooperation, while politicians around the world fail to oppose the vested interests that continue to benefit from such unequal societies."
"We will fight harder than ever before to transform the rhetoric on taxing the rich into a global reality," she added. "We need more equal societies in which the richest no longer hold all the power and wealth, with devastating consequences. We need to redistribute the wealth of the superrich to fund vital public services and the response to climate change. Such a transformation is essential to creating the alternative we seek to today's broken system."
Viviana Santiago, executive director of Oxfam Brazil, applauded Lula's government and the G20 leaders for responding "to people's demands worldwide to tackle extreme inequality, hunger, and climate breakdown, and particularly for rallying action on taxing the superrich."
"G20 governments deserve praise for their groundbreaking commitment to cooperate on taxing the world's superrich. But we won't rest until this delivers real change for people and planet," said Santiago, adding that governments now ostensibly supporting a tax on billionaires' wealth should also "be championing a $5 trillion climate finance goal at COP29," the U.N. summit set to wrap up in Baku, Azerbaijan this week.
"How can they argue that climate justice is unaffordable with a deal to raise trillions of dollars by taxing the superrich on the table?" she asked.
Quentin Parrinello, policy director at the E.U. Tax Observatory, asserted that negotiations on the tax proposal "must now extend to a much more inclusive space than the G20."
"Such reforms don't happen overnight, but time is pressing," said Parrinello. "This agenda is even more important today, with the risk of geopolitical fragmentation and looming wealth concentration fueling inequality and undermining democracy."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular