Do Billionaires Pay Taxes?

Author: Laurent Bach (ESSEC)Antoine Bozio (EHESS-PSE)Arthur Guillouzouic (AMSE-CNRS)Clément Malgouyres (CREST-CNRS)
Posted: 12 September 2025

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 is ubiquitous.
JEL codes: E62, H25
Keywords: Income distribution, Tax progressivity, Business Income, Corporate tax