What if the rich pay more taxes? The topic is not new but Bruno Le Maire relaunched it on Wednesday. France’s economy and finance minister wants to “accelerate” international negotiations aimed at establishing a minimum tax on billionaires, he said on the sidelines of the G20 of finance ministers in Brazil.
“We are fully committed to accelerating the process of establishing at the international level, at the OECD level, at the G20 level and I hope at the level of the European countries, the minimum taxation of individuals to counter any kind of tax optimization. For people around the world,” the French minister told reporters.
About 140 states agreed on minimum taxation of multinational companies under the auspices of the OECD at the end of 2021, which includes two pillars, the first aimed at better distribution of taxation for digital giants and the second on a minimum corporate tax of 15%. The international community now needs a “third pillar”, the French minister said on Wednesday, adding that “France will be at the forefront of this subject”.
“Today you have the possibility for the richest people to avoid paying the same amount of income tax as others who are less wealthy. We want to avoid this tax optimization, we want to do it internationally because it is the only effective way,” the minister further confirmed in Brazil.
The pandemic has been favorable to them
The pandemic and the explosion in the stock prices of technology giants have boosted the fortunes of billionaires. Among G20 countries, the richest 1% have seen the tax rate applied to their income drop by almost a third in recent decades, NGO Oxfam estimated in a study published on Tuesday. According to their calculations, less than 8 cents of every dollar of tax revenue in G20 countries comes from wealth taxes.
Gabriel Zucman, a French economist specializing in inequality and tax havens, is to present his recommendations for minimum taxation of billionaires’ wealth to G20 finance ministers meeting in Sao Paulo under the Brazilian presidency on Thursday.
