Do Billionaires Pay Taxes?

Laurent Bach, Antoine Bozio, Arthur Guillouzouic and Clément Malgouyres
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Laurent Bach: ESSEC Business School
Antoine Bozio: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Arthur Guillouzouic: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IPP - Institut des politiques publiques
Clément Malgouyres: IPP - Institut des politiques publiques, CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - GENES - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - GENES - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Institut des Politiques Publiques from HAL

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: Corporate tax; Business Income; Tax progressivity; Income distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05423119v1
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