Gabriel Zucman - The billionaire tax: a (modest) proposal for the 21st century

📅 Jan 29, 2025 Norad 11 MIN 3002 VIEWS 11 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS

Gabriel Zucman, Professor of economics and Director of the EU Tax Observatory. The billionaire tax: a (modest) proposal for the 21st century. The Norad Conference is Norway’s largest venue for all stakeholders with an interest in international challenges and global #development. We will bring together business, civil society, researchers and authorities from Norway and around the world. See the rest of the conference here: • Norad-konferansen 2025: Money Talks At The Norad Conference 2025 we’re gonna talk about money. With money we fight diseases. We educate children. We fertilize soil...

Host 0:00 ↗

In the last decade, we have seen some huge scandals, such as the Panama Papers, uncovering how tax havens have been used to launder money, conceal wealth, and dodge taxes — money that could have financed development. Our next speaker may be the world's leading economist on this topic. Gabriel Zucman is a professor of economics and director of the EU Tax Observatory at the Paris School of Economics. Their research is breaking new ground as well as giving input to decision-makers such as the G20. Gabriel Zucman, please.

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APA

Zucman, G. (2025, January 29). Gabriel Zucman - The billionaire tax: a (modest) proposal for the 21st century [Interview transcript]. Norad. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3088870/

MLA

Gabriel Zucman. "Gabriel Zucman - The billionaire tax: a (modest) proposal for the 21st century." Norad, 29 Jan. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3088870/.

BibTeX

@misc{zucman2025_3088870,
  author       = {Gabriel Zucman},
  title        = {Gabriel Zucman - The billionaire tax: a (modest) proposal for the 21st century},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, Norad. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2025},
  month        = {jan},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3088870/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}

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Key Quotes (2)

“The problem that we have today is that there's a growing body of evidence that shows that the super rich pay much less tax, all taxes included, relative to their income than the rest of the population. In countries like France or the Netherlands or Italy, billionaires in effect pay half as much in tax relative to their income than their secretaries. This comes from the fact that the super rich can”

▶ 2:52 CONTROVERSIAL POLICY

“The proposal that was put on the table by Brazil, and I wrote the technical report that details that proposal, is the idea of getting together as countries and saying look, there should be a floor to how low the tax rates of the super rich can go. They should pay in tax each year the equivalent of at least let's say 2% of their wealth. It's not super ambitious — 2% when their wealth is growing 6, ”

▶ 8:15 CONTROVERSIAL POLICY

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About Gabriel Zucman

Gabriel Zucman, professor at the Paris School of Economics and UC Berkeley, has been promoting his book *We Need to Tax Billionaires* and advocating for wealth taxation in recent media appearances. In August and September 2026, he discussed his proposal for a minimum tax of 2 percent on wealth for individuals with net worth above $100 million, arguing that the current system allows the ultra-wealthy to pay lower effective tax rates than middle-class Americans. He has described the concentration of wealth among the richest households as a threat to democracy and has called for taxing wealth rather than income alone, citing examples such as Jeff Bezos claiming the child tax credit in a year when he received no income tax. Zucman has also voiced support for California's Proposition 40, which he described as the first-ever tax on billionaire wealth, during appearances on podcasts and in an endorsement with the SEIU UHW. He stated that the measure is being watched globally and could serve as a turning point for international efforts to tax the super rich. In his public comments, he framed the status quo of low taxation on billionaires as "radical" and argued that a wealth tax is a matter of equality before the law, while responding to concerns about tax flight by suggesting that policy design can reduce incentives for the wealthy to relocate.

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