We need to tax billionaires

Join us for this STICERD event at which Gabriel Zucman will talk about his new book.

While ordinary citizens pay around half of their income in tax, billionaires often pay close to zero income tax because they earn almost all of their income through companies. Yet there is a lack of political will to change this.

If the super-rich are left outside the tax system, the concentration of economic power eventually clashes with our democratic ideals. This is both a question of fairness and a question of democracy.

Society has become richer, but not more equitable. One proposed solution is the 2% ‘Zucman tax’: a minimum tax on the ultra-rich themselves, put forward by economist and global expert on the taxation of wealth, Gabriel Zucman. We Need to Tax Billionaires shows why now is the moment.

Meet our speaker and chair

Gabriel Zucman is professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics and Ecole normale supérieure – PSL, Summer Research Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and founding Director of the International Tax Observatory. He is the author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations and has had several papers published in leading journals. He is the founding director of the PSE Stone center on Global Wealth Dynamics. He received the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association in 2023.

Camille Landais is Professor of Economics at LSE, and Director of STICERD. In addition to his academic role, he is a member of the French Conseil d’Analyse Économique and holds affiliations with the Institut des politiques publiques, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, and the European Economic Association. He has also served in editorial roles for leading academic journals.

More about this event

The Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) were established in 1978 with funds donated by Suntory Limited and the (then) Toyota Motor Company Limited of Japan, with further donations from Suntory Limited in 1984 and 1989 and the Toyota Motor Corporation in 1995. We have also enjoyed the support of the Saji Research Lectureship in Japanese Economic and Social History.

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