Phil Magness: Who Really Pays the Most Taxes?

Reason Podcasts

How much do billionaires really pay in taxes? "Today, the superrich control a greater share of America's wealth than during the Gilded Age of Carnegies and Rockefellers," said Gabriel Zucman in a recent New York Times opinion piece entitled, "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires." Zucman is an economist at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, and a frequent collaborator with superstar economist Thomas Piketty, author of the extremely influential book on wealth inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. But today's guest, Phil Magness—an economic historian, author, and the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy at the Independent Institute—says the work of Piketty and his circle of inequality-obsessed colleagues is deeply flawed and sometimes outright deceptive. He points out that billionaires do pay taxes…a lot of taxes. And the inequality literature is riddled with errors and bad statistics. Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Just Asking Questions: Billionaires and Taxes 01:38 Unpacking the Misleading Tax Rate Graphs 06:38 The Political Motivations Behind Misleading Tax Narratives 15:39 Analyzing the Impact of Tax Credits on Lower-Income Earners 22:32 The Real Tax Burden: A Closer Look at Wealthy Americans' Contributions 27:05 Countering Piketty's Inequality Data With Accurate Accounting 34:58 The Practical Problems With a Wealth Tax 40:04 Piketty's Inequality Narrative and Its Flaws 48:50 Global Financial Transparency and Taxation Proposals 54:40 The Moral and Economic Case Against High Taxation 57:48 Listener Q&A: Defending the Show's Title Producer: John Osterhoudt