{"id":459343,"date":"2025-09-29T02:45:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T02:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/459343\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T02:45:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T02:45:13","slug":"france-cant-stop-talking-about-gabriel-zucman-and-his-wealth-tax-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/459343\/","title":{"rendered":"France can\u2019t stop talking about Gabriel Zucman \u2014 and his wealth tax \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The merit of the Zucman tax is not the tax itself, it is the diagnosis and moving away from the idea that nothing can be done,&#8221; said Pascal Saint-Amans, a French official<strong> <\/strong>who for a decade led the push for global corporate taxation reform at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Zucmania<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More than a decade after Thomas Piketty\u2019s wildly successful \u201cCapital in the Twenty-First Century,\u201d Zucman is taking the crown of France\u2019s next rock-star economist.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>His work on wealth taxes helped inspire left-wing presidential candidates in the United States, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and netted him the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aeaweb.org\/about-aea\/honors-awards\/bates-clark\/gabriel-zucman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">in 2023<\/a>. Last year, he advised Brazil as it sought to push forward a global minimum tax on billionaires when the country <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/emmanuel-macron-brazil-lula-da-silva-global-minimum-tax-billionaires-wealthiest-people\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">presided over the G20<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Zucman, who teaches alongside Piketty at the Paris School of Economics as well as the University of California, Berkeley,\u00a0has proven to be a master communicator willing to spar on social media or in in-person debates, which are many.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/13079310-1024x700.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7235202\"  \/>LVMH chief Bernard Arnault said the tax would \u201cdestroy the French economy.\u201d | Pool photo by Gabriel Bouys\/EPA<\/p>\n<p>LVMH chief <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/world\/europe\/article\/gabriel-zucman-france-wealth-tax-djzsvv2p3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bernard Arnault said<\/a> the tax would \u201cdestroy the French economy.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lemonde.fr\/idees\/article\/2025\/09\/09\/la-taxe-zucman-genererait-une-reduction-du-deficit-de-5-milliards-d-euros-pas-de-20-milliards_6640115_3232.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Other influential economists argue<\/a> the measure would only bring in \u20ac5 billion, not the \u20ac20 billion Zucman says. Legal experts worry it&#8217;s unconstitutional.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Then there&#8217;s the capital flight argument: that billionaires would simply leave France to avoid paying the tax, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/pierre-edouard-sterin-pericles-france-politics-marine-le-pen\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">as Pierre-\u00c9douard St\u00e9rin did<\/a>, depriving French coffers of significant revenue. A body of independent economists advising the French government, however, <a href=\"https:\/\/cae-eco.fr\/fiscalite-du-capital-quels-sont-les-effets-de-lexil-fiscal-sur-leconomie-communique-de-presse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">found that<\/a> such an exodus would not have a significant economic impact, punching a small hole in that argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;The merit of the Zucman tax is not the tax itself, it is the diagnosis and moving away&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2106,2825,34,2000,299,36,24402,38,28649,12338,1200,153868,151801,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-459343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-brazil","9":"tag-debt","10":"tag-emmanuel-macron","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-french-political-crisis","15":"tag-french-politics","16":"tag-national-budgets","17":"tag-sebastien-lecornu","18":"tag-tax","19":"tag-tax-harmonization","20":"tag-tax-avoidance","21":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115285296701433445","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}