Governments should open a new front in the international clampdown on tax evasion with a global minimum tax on billionaires, which could raise $250 billion annually, the EU Tax Observatory said on Monday.
If levied, the sum would be equivalent to only 2% of the nearly $13 trillion in wealth owned by the 2,700 billionaires globally, the research group hosted at the Paris School of Economics said.
Currently billionaires effectively pay far less personal tax than other taxpayers of more modest means because they can park wealth in shell companies sheltering them from income tax, the group said in its 2024 Global Tax Evasion Report.
“In our view, this is difficult to justify because it risks to undermine the sustainability of tax systems and the social acceptability of taxation,” the observatory’s director Gabriel Zucman told journalists.
Billionaires’ personal tax in the United States is estimated to be close to 0.5% and as low as zero in otherwise high-tax France, the Observatory estimated.
Growing wealth inequality in some countries is fueling calls for the richest citizens to bear more of the tax burden as public finances struggle to cope with aging populations, huge financing needs for the energy transition and debt racked up during the Covid pandemic.
US President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget included plans for a 25% minimum tax on the wealthiest 0.01%, but that proposal has since fallen by the wayside with lawmakers in Washington preoccupied with government shutdown threats and looming funding deadlines.
Source: cnn.com
