富裕税の是非

池田信夫

消費税を10％で凍結すると何が起こるか

アメリカでも富裕税の是非について論じられている。

Democrats’ Plans to Tax Wealth Would Reshape U.S. Economy

“You’re going to completely disincentivize capital investment, which is going to be very, very bad for economic growth,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in an interview in September. “Taxing capital is not a good thing for creating economic growth, and if anything we should be looking at how we create more incentives for economic growth.”

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the two University of California, Berkeley, economists who helped Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders develop their plans, project that Ms. Warren’s proposal would hit about 70,000 households and generate $2.6 trillion in revenue for the federal government over a decade. They project that Mr. Sanders’s proposal would apply to 180,000 households and raise $4.35 trillion over 10 years.
Mr. Zucman said in an interview that he believes a wealth tax would have a modest but positive impact on growth. By reducing the power of the wealthiest, he argued, it would make markets more competitive and spur innovation.
Mr. Mankiw, the former head of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, offered a searing critique, arguing that a wealth tax would skew incentives that could alter when the superrich make investments, how they give to charity and even potentially spur a wave of divorces for tax purposes. He also noted that billionaires, with their legions of lawyers and accountants, have proven to be experts at gaming the system to avoid even the most onerous taxes.

Left-leaning economists have expressed their own doubts about a wealth tax. Earlier this year, Lawrence Summers, who was President Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary, warned in an article with Natasha Sarin, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, that wealth taxes would sap innovation by putting new burdens on entrepreneurial businesses while they are starting up. In their view, a country with more millionaires is a sign of economic vibrancy.

“Turning the tax code into a vehicle for confronting what some call ‘oligarchic drift’ would undermine business confidence, reduce investment, degrade economic efficiency and punish success in ways unlikely to be good for the country or even to be appealing to most Americans,” they wrote.

　億万長者にちょびっと富裕税を課するだけで、他の人は助かるし、億万長者の権力を削ぐことでかえって経済成長するのだ、という意見がある一方、 起業家のやる気を削ぎ、富裕層が寄付もしなくなるし、富裕層は、優秀な弁護士使って税逃れするだろうし、税逃れのために離婚まで増加するかもしれない、投資は減り、経済効率は悪化、成功した人を罰することになり、アメリカにとってよくない、と考える経済学者たちも多い。

　富裕税というのは、政治的には人気がでる政策なんだろうし、格差是正して社会の底上げをするという目的はいいんだけど、その目的達成のために、経済的にどの手段が一番いいのか・・・これが素人にはわからんところなんだよなああ。