Do Billionaires Pay Taxes?

Laurent Bach, Antoine Bozio, Arthur Guillouzouic and Malgouyres, Clément

No 20660, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We link French households’ tax records to the corporations they control, and build a payout-policy–neutral income measure, with corresponding tax burdens including those of "billionaires": the top 0.0002%. Defined as such, income is more concentrated than taxable income, it better predicts rich-list membership, and persists more among billionaires. Personal taxes remain progressive until the top 0.1%, but eventually decline to 2% of income. Corporate taxes are an imperfect progressive backstop, as total tax rates fall from 45% at the 0.1% threshold to 25% for billionaires. Among these, the tax burden is global and tax-efficient pyramidal control over businesses ubiquitous.

Keywords: Income distribution; Tax progressivity; Corporate taxation; Business income (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E62 H25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
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