It is more accustomed to universities than to televisions. Champion of the Fiscal Justice for the left, opponent of companies for the right and the liberals, to the head of LVMH, who describes him as “Pseudo University”, the discreet economist Gabriel Zucman is located in the center of the budgetary debates with his proposal to tax the ultra rich.
Driven 38 years in light to defend his proposal, the theorist of the “Tax on Zucman” called, defends the idea of a tax equivalent to 2% of the inheritance of people who have more than 100 million euros.
“Bernard Arnault Tax”
Gabriel Zucman, who shares his life between Paris and the University of Berkeley in California in the summer, has distant relations with the political world: “We respond to requests,” Quentin Parrinello, director of Public Policies at the European Tax Observatory, told AFP Quentin Parrinello.
He worked with Deputies Eva SAS and Clémentine Autin to prepare a proposal for the Ultra Rico Tax Tax, adopted in February at the National Assembly, but rejected in the Senate, met with the Socialists Boris Vallaud and Olivier Faure, the Minister of the Economy Éric Lombard, and will be received on Tuesday in the Liot group.
“Ecumenical”
The expected effect is successful according to Gabriel Zucman: “Almost all recognize the need for a minimum ultra rich imposition,” he said during an interview in February with AFP on this project widely acclaimed according to a recent survey, and supported by seven Nobel Prizes in Economics.
Opposite, the attacks are sometimes virulent: this tax “will empty France from its companies,” he punished the Chief of Republicans Bruno Retilleau. Bernard Arnault described last weekend, the Franco -American economist as “Pseudo Universidad” and “Extreme Left Activist”.
In the process, interviewed by AFP, the economist called to respect “the truth and the facts” in the debate on the taxes of the high and high heritage.
What worries him, “is rather drifting in Trumpist mode, the interrogation of scientific work,” adds Lamia Ouealaalou.
Request in G20
In 2019, this piano lover and father of three children published with his colleague Emmanuel Saez “The triumph of injustice”, in which he already approached his footprints to tax houses and rich businesses.
The Brazilian presidency of the G20 ordered in 2024 a report on the taxes of the richest, and, despite the support of several countries, including France, did not retain its idea of taxing 2%billionaires.
“We must act at all scales,” insists this son of Parisian doctors, a graduate from the Paris School of Economics and former Ecole School Normale Supérieure of Paris-Saclay.
The fact that this topic has reached the negotiating table is a victory, according to its former thesis director, economist Thomas Piketty.
Gabriel Zucman also advised Democratic candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to the US presidential election of 2020, and worked on the issue of fiscal paradises through “the hidden wealth of nations”, his thesis was translated into almost 20 languages.
In 2023 he received the Clark Bates Bates, a prestigious economic reward.
A “controversial” award, said The Economist newspaper, remembering that some of his colleagues questioned their methods to measure inequalities.
Source: BFM TV
