Gabriel Zucman, Paris School of Economics professor, UC Berkeley summer research professor, International Tax Observatory founding director and ‘We Need to Tax Billionaires’ author, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the global wealth tax movement, taxing unrealized gains, his tax proposal for wealthy, and more. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/42d859g
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What Gabriel Zucman said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Gabriel Zucman argued that taxing billionaires is not about taxing unrealized capital gains but about establishing a new principle: extreme wealth should carry unavoidable duties to society. He proposed an annual minimum tax of 2% of wealth for those worth over $100 million, because billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk can structure their finances to report little or no taxable income. He dismissed the host's claim that such taxes are punitive, noting the proposed California tax is a one-time 5% on billionaires whose wealth has grown 200% recently. Zucman framed the issue as one of equality before the law, not revenue alone, and cited that the 400 wealthiest Americans own wealth equivalent to 25% of GDP, and California's 250 billionaires own wealth equal to 50% of the state's GDP. He agreed it won't fix all problems but insisted it addresses a core democratic issue.
Key takeaways
Proposes an annual minimum tax of 2% of wealth for individuals worth over $100 million.
The 400 wealthiest Americans own wealth equivalent to 25% of U.S. GDP.
California's 250 billionaires own wealth equal to 50% of the state's GDP.
The California Billionaire Tax, Proposition 40, is a one-time 5% tax on billionaires.
Billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk can report little or no taxable income.
2:32Do you even have a broader conversation about capital gains taxes at a certain level, whether that should actually look a lot more like income taxes for the super, for the, for the super wealthy?
5:11How do you, how do you find a way to raise enough revenue and cut enough expenses so that this $40 trillion debt that we're all looking at can get solved?
Welcome back to Squawk Box. Our next guest, known as the architect of the global wealth tax movement, joining us right now, Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman. He is a UC Berkeley Summer Research Professor, founder-director of the International Tax Observatory. His new book is out today, "We Need to Tax Billionaires." Good morning to you. It is the hot topic in your state, in California, but also around the country. And I'm going to start with this. The biggest question I have is just the philosophical need-slash-question. Let's assume you need to raise more revenue. At the same time, I imagine you may think we need to cut services, but maybe you don't. I don't know about taxing unrealized gains, and I think that is sort of a philosophical breaking point for a lot of people because people say, well, and I get the real estate story in terms of. But when I say real estate, people tax real estate, whether it's realized or unrealized. But make the case on the taxing unrealized gains just on a philosophical basis.
I mean, this is not about taxing unrealized capital gains. This is about creating a new principle, which is the principle that extreme wealth should come with unavoidable duties towards society. So the idea is that there has to be a minimum amount of tax that you must pay each year if you're extremely wealthy. And we can debate what it means to be extremely wealthy. I've proposed $100 million, but that's the basic idea. There has to be a floor. It's an idea that I think everybody can agree with. And so then the question becomes, how do we compute this minimum tax if it's expressed as a fraction of taxable income as defined currently by the tax law? It doesn't work because the main problem is that the billionaires easily find ways to report no or very little taxable income. Hence, the minimum to be effective has to be expressed as a fraction of wealth. And so that's the proposal I make in the book: to create an annual minimum tax for the super rich, equal to 2% of their wealth.
But this goes back to effectively deciding you're prepared and willing and want to tax unrealized gains. And the question I'm coming back to is sort of the philosophical decision to tax something that somebody technically doesn't have. And that I think is just sort of a breaking point for some people. I've always wondered why we don't do lots of other things in the tax scheme, prevent people from taking loans. You talk about loopholes, taking loans against their assets so that they don't have to pay taxes. That's something I think seems like low-hanging fruit. We could talk about carried interest. That seems like low-hanging fruit. Stepped-up basis at death seems like low-hanging fruit. Do you even have a broader conversation about capital gains taxes at a certain level, whether that should actually look a lot more like income taxes for the super, for the, for the super wealthy? But I think there's a lot of people who sort of start and stop the conversation around unrealized gains, even when they don't understand what unrealized gains are.
I mean, by all means, let's do all the things that you just mentioned, closing loopholes, the step-up in basis at death, and all of that. It's necessary, but it's not sufficient. It's not sufficient because it wouldn't address the core issue, which has been highlighted by recent research all over the world, which is that past a certain level of wealth, it's just very easy to structure your wealth such that this wealth will generate no taxable income. That's how you end up in situations where people like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, here's the report, no taxable income or barely any income, and so they don't pay any income tax. This was revealed a few years ago in the US by the media, ProPublica. And so the solution is not, the solution I'm proposing is not to tax unrealized capital gains in the sense of taxing the increase in the value of your wealth from one year to the other. It's something much simpler. So let me just mention that because when you say unrealized capital gains, then it gives the impression that we're taxing something that's notional, that's virtual, that doesn't exist. But what I'm proposing is to tax wealth. And wealth is very real. Wealth is the value of all your assets, net of your debts, right? And there's already a wealth tax in the US. There's even two wealth taxes. You have property taxes.
Let me ask you one more question. I'm sure Joe wants to get in. So let me just ask you this, though. I don't want to... And again, it is somewhat of a philosophical question. You said that taxes right now are insufficient on the wealthy. One of the arguments about wealth taxes and just taxes more broadly is even if you decided to confiscate 10 or 20% of the wealth of the 1%, it would, you know, have a dent of, you know, you know, you know, half a year of the United States budget. And so the question is ultimately, I think, is this an issue of fairness on one end, or is it really an issue of how do you actually fix the problems that we have in this country in terms of our overall budget? How do you, how do you find a way to raise enough revenue and cut enough expenses so that this $40 trillion debt that we're all looking at can get solved?
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Zucman, G. (2026, August 25). 'We Need to Tax Billionaires': Author Gabriel Zucman on taxing wealth around the world [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3088861/
MLA
Gabriel Zucman. "'We Need to Tax Billionaires': Author Gabriel Zucman on taxing wealth around the world." CNBC Television, 25 Aug. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3088861/.
BibTeX
@misc{zucman2026_3088861,
author = {Gabriel Zucman},
title = {'We Need to Tax Billionaires': Author Gabriel Zucman on taxing wealth around the world},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {aug},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3088861/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
