가브리엘 쥐크만
@gabriel_zucman · 유럽
이스라엘국은 유럽 섹션의 프랑스 관련 연구·분야별 전문지식 보도를 위해 가브리엘 쥐크만을 팔로우합니다.
So, Mr. @MartinLorentzon , you are of course entitled to oppose a billionaire minimum tax. But calling it “absurd” does not make the underlying issue disappear. Sooner or later, in Sweden like in other democracies, billionaires will have to pay their fair share. https://t.co/jLXMsYFD5W
And the idea of creating an unavoidable minimum tax based on wealth is gaining ground. It has attracted broad public support, from political parties, trade unions, economists and Nobel laureates. Why? Because the underlying principle is difficult to dispute: no billionaire should be able to live in their own parallel society, tax free. https://t.co/r0u5F15Qnp
This question is not uniquely Swedish. The same debate is taking place in France, the United Kingdom, California and elsewhere. The details differ. The underlying principle does not: A democracy cannot sustainably ask ordinary citizens to contribute a larger share of their income than the people with the greatest ability to pay.
Mr. @MartinLorentzon , I understand that the taxation of billionaires has become a major issue in Sweden’s election campaign—and that you have responded by saying you would leave the country if a wealth tax were introduced. But ordinary citizens have every right to ask why they should face higher tax rates than billionaires. https://t.co/oM8GdabCy9
Only ultra-wealthy people who currently pay exceptionally little would owe more, bringing them up to the minimum. And 2% was not picked out of a hat. It is approximately the rate needed to eliminate the regressivity we observe at the very top—to stop billionaires paying lower effective rates than ordinary citizens.
My proposal is straightforward. Billionaires and centimillionaires should pay at least 2% of their wealth in taxes each year. This is a minimum tax, not an additional 2% tax on everyone. If you already pay taxes equal to 2% or more of your wealth, you owe nothing extra.
The solution is to establish a simple principle: Extreme wealth must come with an unavoidable minimum tax contribution. How? Not by defining the minimum as a fraction of taxable income—the whole problem is that billionaires can arrange to report very little taxable income. Instead, use wealth, which is much harder to manipulate. https://t.co/yJAQss6qao
So no, Mr. @MartinLorentzon : there is nothing “absurd” about correcting the fundamental injustice at the heart of Sweden’s tax system. When billionaires pay lower effective tax rates than ordinary citizens, the tax system is failing at its most basic task. It erodes the tax base. It erodes trust. And it is neither efficient nor fair.
Your second argument is tax exile. “Billionaires will leave if we tax them.” Some will—if leaving allows them to escape the tax. But that is not a law of nature. It is a policy choice. Sweden could keep taxing its superrich individuals after they leave for, say, 10 years after departure. Then moving abroad for tax purposes largely ceases to solve the problem.
So let’s talk now about your first objection to a billionaire wealth tax: “liquidity.” About 90% of billionaire wealth consists of shares in companies. But shares are financial assets. A @Spotify share worth €500 is not “virtual wealth.” You can buy it for €500 today and sell it tomorrow. If its price has not changed, you get €500 back. Elon Musk used to pretend his wealth was “virtual”, until he bought Twitter for $44 billion, with very real consequences.
To sum up, here’s the fundamental anomaly: For most people, the income tax taxes all income whether it is consumed or saved. For the ultra-rich, only the fraction of income which is consumed is taxed. And this fraction is tiny, because one simply cannot consume billions every year. Hence the very low tax rates of the super-rich, a tax avoidance that significantly reduces government revenue.
But for the ultra-wealthy, the rules are different. They earn billions in dividends: this income is not taxed and can be saved tax free. As long as this income stays in their personal holding companies, it remains tax free. Some pretend that this income earned in personal holding companies is not “real income”. This is incorrect and reflects a confusion between two fundamental economic notions: income and consumption. This income is very real: it can be used to buy yachts, real estate, media companies, shares in companies, or to do some philanthropy – anything one might want to do at that level of wealth.
How is this possible? The key mechanism is the personal holding company. Instead of receiving income directly, subject to the individual income tax, ultra-wealthy individuals earn their income – mostly dividends, which can be in the billions of kronor – through personal holding companies, free from individual income tax.
Billionaires pay particularly little tax due to the quasi-systematic use of personal holding companies. And because the middle class pays a lot of tax in Sweden, the drop-off in effective tax rates is spectacular: from around 50% for the upper-middle class, all tax included, to only around 15–20% for billionaires. Sweden thus has one of the most regressive tax systems at the very top that we observe anywhere in the world.
We recently investigated this question in Sweden and Norway with @mariusring and @SeimSeim. We started with a simple hypothesis: if any countries succeeded in taxing billionaires effectively, surely it would be the Nordic countries. To our surprise, we found the opposite. https://t.co/V8iRfsFNtR
As a result, income tax—in principle the key pillar of tax fairness—vanishes among billionaires. Through holding companies and other legal structures, the ultra-wealthy opt out of contributing their fair share to the common good. That is a clear violation of the principle of equality before the law, one of the fundamental pillars of liberal democracy.
Recent studies conducted across the world show the same striking pattern: billionaires pay less tax, relative to their income, than the rest of the population. Why ? In a nutshell, because they can easily report no or very little taxable personal income. https://t.co/5WbkOZ4Dfd
You recently published an op-ed laying out your arguments against the billionaire tax I support: https://t.co/S8pgBfNNzL I’ll come back to them. But first, let’s start with the problem such a tax is designed to solve: the regressivity of the tax system at the very top. https://t.co/bgy3SQlsUg
Hello dear Spotify founder @MartinLorentzon There is nothing “absurd” about pointing out that Swedish billionaires like yourself pay a lower share of their income in taxes than ordinary Swedes. It is a fact. But since you question our research on the regressivity of Sweden’s tax system, allow me to explain the main conclusions of our work, the most comprehensive to date on this issue. 🧵
M. @PatrickMartin_1 , vouloir mettre fin au privilège fiscal des milliardaires n’est en rien un « hold up ». En revanche, affaiblir nos finances publiques déjà exsangues, importer en France le modèle américain d’assurance privée, et redistribuer les revenus au détriment des plus démunis, voilà le véritable « hold up intellectuel et politique ».
C’est donc cela la TVA dite « sociale » : redistribuer les revenus au profit des cadres supérieurs et des actionnaires, au détriment des plus démunis et des inactifs. Politique parfaitement inégalitaire, camouflée comme souvent sous une rhétorique trompeuse et une mise en œuvre pernicieuse. Car cette politique revient précisément à faire baisser les prestations sociales (pensions de retraite, assurance chômage, RSA, etc.) sans le dire, tout en redistribuant les économies ainsi réalisées aux ménages les plus favorisés, sans le dire.
- Pour les classes populaires et moyennes en emploi, l’effet net est neutre ou faible : la hausse de la TVA efface la hausse du salaire net. On reprend à la caisse du supermarché ce qui a été donné sur les feuilles de paie. - Pour les travailleurs à haut salaire et les actionnaires, qui ne consomment qu’une partie de leurs revenus, l’effet est positif : la hausse du salaire net et des profits dépasse la hausse de la TVA. - Enfin pour les personnes qui ne sont pas en emploi – retraités, chômeurs, allocataires du RSA, etc. – l’effet est très négatif : ces derniers subissent de plein fouet la hausse de la TVA, sans aucune compensation.
Voici ce que l’on peut en dire, à la lumière des meilleures études disponibles. - Une baisse des cotisations salariales ferait augmenter le salaire net des travailleurs concernés. - Une baisse des cotisations patronales se traduirait en partie par des hausses de salaires nets, en partie par des hausses de profits pour les entreprises. - La hausse de la TVA renchérirait le prix des biens à la consommation. L’effet net de tout cela ?
3/Enfin le manque à gagner pourrait être compensé, comme le propose le @medef , par une hausse de TVA : c’est le fameux projet de « TVA sociale ». Cela vaut la peine de s’y attarder, car cette proposition risque d’être au cœur des débats de l’élection présidentielle à venir. Moins de cotisations sociales d’un côté, plus de TVA de l’autre : qui gagnerait et perdrait à ce jeu de bonneteau ?
Dans ce cas de figure, au lieu de consacrer une partie de leur salaire au financement de la Sécurité sociale, les travailleurs paieraient une cotisation à des compagnies d’assurance privées : complémentaire santé, épargne retraite, etc. C’est le modèle américain que je connais bien, ayant vécu 10 ans aux Etats-Unis et produit différents travaux sur ces sujets. Et le moins que l’on puisse dire c’est que ce modèle n’est pas probant, surtout en matière de santé : coûts prohibitifs, financement inique, inégalités majeures. 28 millions d'Américains n'ont pas accès à l’assurance santé.