The idea is simple. There are about 3,000 billionaires in the world and in recent years they have been getting richer and richer. Demands on hard-up governments from ageing populations and the drive to achieve net zero are growing all the time. Rather than expect voters already struggling to make ends meet to pay more, how about a wealth tax on Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and their like?

This is an idea that has obvious attractions. As Joe Biden has pointed out, US billionaires make their money in ways that are often taxed at lower rates than the ordinary wage income of American workers. Overwhelmingly, their wealth comes from the rising value of their assets, and they use tax loopholes and legal accounting moves to minimise the tax they pay. Wealthy Americans pay an average tax rate on their incomes of just 8%. Biden thinks they should be paying a minimum of 25%.

The Brazilian government has an even more ambitious proposal – for an annual global tax levied at 2% on the wealth of the world’s billionaires. The French economist Gabriel Zucman has been asked to draw up a detailed plan for how a billionaire wealth tax would work ready for a meeting of G20 finance ministers in July.

Pre-pandemic, Zucman’s idea of an annual 2% tax on the wealth of billionaires would probably have been rejected out of hand, but........

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