Policy Brief: A European Wealth Tax

Abstract

The distribution of wealth in the European Union is heavily concentration at the top. The richest 1% of households hold a third of total aggregate net wealth while the poorest 50% of households hold less than 5% of total net wealth. The flipside of this strong concentration of wealth is the high revenue potential of wealth taxes. The estimates presented here suggest that a progressive tax on net wealth could generate revenues between 3% and 10.8% of GDP.