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wealth tax
2% Wealth Tax on Just 3,000 Billionaires Could Raise $250 Billion a Year: Nobel Economists
"Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible."
Jul 07, 2025
Seven Nobel laureates on Monday published an op-ed advocating for "a minimum tax for the ultrarich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth," in the French newspaper Le Monde.
"They have never been so wealthy and yet contribute very little to the public coffers: From Bernard Arnault to Elon Musk, billionaires have significantly lower tax rates than the average taxpayer," wrote Daron Acemoglu, George Akerlof, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz.
Citing pioneering research from the E.U. Tax Observatory, the renowned economists noted that "ultrawealthy individuals pay around 0% to 0.6% of their wealth in income tax. In a country like the United States, their effective tax rate is around 0.6%, while in a country like France, it is closer to 0.1%."
Although the "ultrawealthy can easily structure their wealth to avoid income tax, which is supposed to be the cornerstone of tax justice," the strategies for doing so differ by region, the experts detailed. Europeans often use family holding companies that are banned in the United States, "which explains why the wealthy are more heavily taxed there than in Europe—though some have still managed to find workarounds."
The good news is that "there is no inevitability here. Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible," argued the economists, who say that taxing the overall wealth of the ultrarich, not just income, is the key.
The wealth tax approach, they wrote, "is effective because it targets all forms of tax optimization, whatever their nature. It is targeted, as it applies only to the wealthiest taxpayers, and only to those among them who engage in tax avoidance."
💡 "One of the most promising avenues is to introduce a minimum tax for the ultra-rich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth."Seven Nobel laureates in economics advocate for the Zucman tax in their latest op-ed.Read the full @lemonde.fr article 👇www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...
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— EU Tax Observatory (@taxobservatory.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 8:05 AM
The anticipated impact would be significant. As the op-ed highlights: "Globally, a 2% minimum tax on billionaire wealth would generate about $250 billion in tax revenue—from just 3,000 individuals. In Europe, around $50 billion could be raised. And by extending this minimum rate to individuals with wealth over $100 million, these sums would increase significantly."
That's according to a June 2024 report that French economist and E.U. Tax Observatory director Gabriel Zucman prepared for the Group of 20's Brazilian presidency—which was followed by G20 leaders' November commitment to taxing the rich and last month's related proposal from the governments of Brazil, South Africa, and Spain.
"The international movement is underway," the economists declared Monday, also pointing to recent developments on the "Zucman tax" in France. The French National Assembly voted in favor of a 2% minimum tax on wealth exceeding €100 million, or $117 million, in February—but the Senate rejected the measure last month.
The economists urged the European country to keep working at it, writing that "at a time of ballooning public deficits and exploding extreme wealth, the French government must seize the initiative approved by the National Assembly. There is no reason to wait for an international agreement to be finalized—on the contrary, France should lead by example, as it has done in the past," when it was the first country to introduce a value-added tax (VAT).
"As for the risk of tax exile, the bill passed by the National Assembly provides that taxpayers would remain subject to the minimum tax for five years after leaving the country," they wrote. "The government could go further and propose extending this period to 10 years, which would likely reduce the risk of expatriation even more."
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Tax the Rich and Corporations to Close the Climate Finance Gap
New analysis by the Tax Justice Network shows that governments could raise an additional $2.6 trillion each year by applying a modest wealth tax to the richest 0.5% of households and ending corporate tax abuse.
Jul 01, 2025
As the climate crisis accelerates, global fault lines are widening. Wealthy nations are gutting aid budgets while pouring fortunes into their militaries. Their climate finance commitments ring empty, masked by claims that public funds have run dry. But the reality is different: The money is there, and a bold tax justice agenda can unlock it. Reclaiming tax sovereignty—the power to decide how wealth is taxed and where it goes—can shift resources away from billionaires and corporate giants to fund real climate solutions.
This isn’t a funding gap. It’s a sovereignty gap.
New analysis by the Tax Justice Network shows that governments could raise an additional $2.6 trillion each year by applying a modest wealth tax to the richest 0.5% of households and ending corporate tax abuse. That would be more than enough to meet global climate finance needs and still leave most countries with billions to invest in care, education, and green jobs at home.
Extreme wealth fuels climate inaction, rising debt, and inequality. In a world on fire, refusing to tax those who profit most is no longer neutral—it’s a global risk.
The climate crisis is accelerating. Floods, heatwaves, and crop failures are pushing more people into precarity. The costs of climate adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage are projected to reach $9 trillion per year by 2030. Yet the global community is still scrambling to honor a $100 billion pledge first made over 15 years ago.
As the Bonn climate talks come to a close and attention turns to the fourth Financing for Development conference in Seville, climate finance remains a structural void that policy declarations alone cannot fill. On the road to COP30 in Belém, governments face a critical choice: Keep chasing inadequate voluntary climate finance handouts, or finally confront the rigged tax systems that let the superrich and big polluters amass obscene wealth while the planet burns.
Tax Justice Network reveals that fair taxation of extreme wealth combined with measures to curb cross-border tax abuse by multinational corporations could raise $2.6 trillion each year—enough to more than double the $1.3 trillion annual climate finance goal that United Nations member countries are aiming to reach by 2030. The real issue isn’t where new money will come from, but why governments keep letting existing public resources leak through the cracks of a broken tax system.
By applying a minimal annual wealth tax of 1.7-3.5% and reclaiming tax revenue from multinationals that underpay tax, countries could unlock additional tax revenue equivalent to 2.4%of global GDP. This is money that could be raised today if governments stopped letting it slip away through loopholes and inaction.
We modeled what countries could raise and contribute based on historic responsibility for emissions. The results are striking. If countries were to contribute to a global climate finance fund sized at $300 billion—the lower end of the current debate—then 89% of countries could cover their share and still have billions left over for public services. Even if the fund were scaled up to $1.5 trillion, 58% of countries would still contribute their fair share and have billions to spare.
Take the United States. It could raise enough additional revenue to contribute $365 billion a year toward climate finance and still be left with $412 billion to spend at home. China, India, the United Kingdom, and Brazil follow the same pattern.
This is the core message of our climate finance slider tool. Taxing extreme wealth and curbing tax abuse does not pit climate justice against development. It enables both. The interactive tool shows how much countries could raise and how much they could contribute if tax rules were rebalanced in favor of people and planet.
So why are countries still acting like climate finance is unaffordable?
The answer lies in decades of eroded tax sovereignty. Countries have signed away their taxing rights through outdated and unfair treaties, allowed wealth to flow into secrecy jurisdictions, and catered to corporate demands for tax cuts and incentives—often under conditions of debt dependence and economic coercion. In the process, governments have weakened their ability and willingness to tax those most responsible for fuelling the climate crisis.
Today, 61% of countries were found to have an “endangered” level of tax sovereignty or worse—meaning they are failing to collect tax revenue worth at least 5% f what they already raise, largely from their richest households and from multinational corporations that underpay tax. Nearly a fifth of countries (19%) fall into the “negated” category, missing out on the equivalent of 15% or more of their annual tax revenue. These are not natural constraints. They are political outcomes shaped by an unequal global financial system.
Across the Global South, the consequences are particularly acute. Many governments face impossible tradeoffs—between education and adaptation, between debt service and disaster response. As United Nations independent expert Attiya Waris has warned:
Across the Global South, care and climate responses are being sacrificed to servicing debts that dwarf the funds we need for a just transition. These sacrifices reflect an international financial order that prioritises creditor claims over human and planetary well-being.
Climate finance cannot be separated from this wider context of fiscal injustice. When governments are forced to borrow for every disaster or rely on discretionary aid pledges, they lose both agency and time. The race to build resilience becomes a race against the clock—one they cannot win without revenue.
It is time to reframe the debate. Climate finance must not rely on broken promises or voluntary pledges. It must be embedded in systems that are fair and redistributive. That means tax systems—ones that reflect both capacity to pay and responsibility for emissions.
The upcoming U.N. Tax Convention offers a once in a generation opportunity to rebalance global tax rules. If done right, it could help all countries reclaim the power to tax their richest residents and corporations fairly. It could end the era of tax havens, profit shifting, and billionaire impunity.
But we do not need to wait for negotiations to conclude. Countries can act now by introducing wealth taxes, renegotiating exploitative tax treaties, increasing transparency, and aligning fiscal policies with climate goals. These reforms are not only possible. They are popular. Polling consistently shows widespread support for taxing extreme wealth to fund public goods.
Extreme wealth fuels climate inaction, rising debt, and inequality. In a world on fire, refusing to tax those who profit most is no longer neutral—it’s a global risk.
By reclaiming tax sovereignty, governments can do what markets and private finance have failed to deliver: fund climate solutions at scale, protect the most vulnerable, and make those most responsible pay their fair share. Refusing to tax isn’t sovereignty—it’s surrender to the idea that tax is a tool for catering to the desires of the superrich, rather than a tool for protecting people’s well-being, the planet, and our collective survival.
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Anti-Poverty Campaigners Cheer Spain-Brazil-South Africa Plan to Tax the Grotesquely Rich
"People are fed up with billionaires' greed eroding the environment and communities we depend on," said one supporter of the new initiative. "It's time for world leaders to listen and act."
Jul 01, 2025
A new plan backed by the governments of Spain, Brazil, and South Africa to tax the fortunes of the uber-rich drew hearty cheers from anti-poverty campaigners, environmental activists, and unions when it was announced on Tuesday.
As described in an announcement by the Spanish government, the initiative aims to create coordination between governments on the taxation of high-net-worth individuals to ensure they are not shuffling money abroad to avoid proper taxation.
"The proposal aims to incentivize and guide different countries to join the initiative and address policy, administrative, and data deficiencies, ensuring that high-net-worth individuals are taxed more efficiently in line with their wealth," the Spanish government explained. "To achieve this, it is necessary to foster international cooperation in multilateral forums to promote and facilitate the implementation of evidence-based reforms and ongoing experiences regarding the taxation of large fortunes in different countries."
The plan—crafted by the governments of Spain and Brazil and presented at the United Nations' Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development being held in the Spanish city of Seville—was quickly praised by an assortment of international nonprofit organizations as an essential tool for tackling global wealth inequality.
Kate Blagojevic, associate director for Europe campaigns for environmental the advocacy group 350.org, described it as "a bold move by Spain and Brazil" that she said could provide funding for clean energy investments around the world, including in countries that lack the resources to make such investments.
"We want more countries to join this coalition so that billionaires and multi-millionaires help to foot the bill for the climate damage they have caused and decrease the huge gap between the rich and the poorest," she said, while also calling for the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to sign on.
Susana Ruiz, the tax justice policy lead at the anti-poverty organization Oxfam, emphasized that international coordination on taxation of high-worth individuals was a serious proposal to address a crisis in global democracy, which she said was being undermined by the corrupting influence of vast sums of money being held by a tiny number of people.
"This extreme inequality is being driven by a financial system that puts the interests of a wealthy few above everyone else," she said. "This concentration of wealth is blocking progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and keeping over three billion people living in poverty: over half of poor countries are spending more on debt repayments than on healthcare or education."
Fred Njehu, the global political lead for Greenpeace’s Fair Share campaign, deemed the tax plan essential at a time when nations are behind their renewable energy goals and when wealthy elites such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos can go all-out for a lavish three-day wedding in Venice.
"Financing is urgently needed for climate action and public services, not for polluting space travel and luxury weddings," he said. "This new coalition of governments working to tax the super-rich adds to the growing global momentum to make the world’s wealthiest pay their fair share. People are fed up with billionaires' greed eroding the environment and communities we depend on. It's time for world leaders to listen and act."
And Leo Hyde, the campaigns and media coordinator at the Public Services International union, praised the plan and said that was the result of years' worth of advocacy by unions and other organizations.
"The initiative aims to ensure a progressive and efficient global tax system with the aim of reducing social inequality," he said. "This builds directly on years of union-led tax justice campaigning that has already yielded significant victories, including the OECD global minimum corporate tax, Australia's public country-by-country reporting initiatives, and the ongoing UN tax treaty negotiations."
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