A Wealth Tax Won't Solve Britain's Fiscal Problems

The finding by British lawmakers that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs doesn’t know how much tax the country’s billionaires pay has done little to enhance the UK collection agency’s prestige. A side effect of the report by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee may be to stoke support for a more radical method of ensuring that society’s richest pay their fair share – namely, a wealth tax.

Wealth taxes have a patchy record of success and have been abandoned by most countries that tried them. France is the most recent example, dropping its levy in favor of a real estate tax in 2018. Only four of the 38 countries in the OECD still impose one – Norway, Spain, Switzerland and Colombia. Yet the idea is gaining renewed global momentum, helped by the work of French economist Gabriel Zucman, whose blueprint for a 2% global minimum tax on billionaires was endorsed by the G-20 under Brazil’s presidency last year.