Do Billionaires Pay Taxes?

Laurent Bach, Antoine Bozio, Arthur Guillouzouic () and Clément Malgouyres
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Laurent Bach: ESSEC Business School
Antoine Bozio: Paris School of Economics (PSE), EHESS, IPP
Arthur Guillouzouic: Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France, https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/en/members/
Clément Malgouyres: CREST–CNRS and IPP–PSE

No 2532, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

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%. De- fined 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; Business Income; Corporate tax (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E62 H25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2025-09
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2532

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