India should do extra to tax its super-rich, France’s Piketty says

By Manoj Kumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India ought to do extra to tax its super-rich given its excessive ranges of inequality, French economist and writer Thomas Piketty mentioned on Friday.

The author of the best-selling ebook “Capital within the twenty first Century” known as on India to observe by on a July pledge by finance ministers from the Group of 20 main economies to cooperate on successfully taxing the world’s largest fortunes.

“India needs to be lively in taxing the wealthy,” Piketty mentioned at an occasion organised by Delhi-based assume tank Analysis and Data System for Growing International locations (RIS) and the Delhi Faculty of Economics.

He mentioned India might elevate annual income value 2.73% of its gross home product by imposing a 2% wealth tax on folks with belongings of greater than 100 million rupees ($1.18 million), and a 33% inheritance tax on property value at the very least the identical quantity.

The proportion of nationwide revenue held by the highest 1% richest Indians now surpassed that of their counterparts in america and Brazil, Piketty mentioned, citing a 2024 report he co-authored, printed by the World Inequality Lab.

In 2022-23, he added, the richest 1% of India’s inhabitants managed 22.6% of the nationwide revenue and held 40.1% of the nation’s complete wealth.

Talking on the identical occasion, the Indian authorities’s chief financial adviser, V. Anantha Nageswaran, opposed Piketty’s name, saying increased taxes might result in increased overflows.

India’s authorities abolished a wealth tax in 2015 and has since rejected requires its return or the introduction of an inheritance tax.

In April, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned inheritance tax might hit the “center and aspirational lessons”, making it tough for them to cross on financial savings or small land holdings to their kids. India doesn’t at present levy an inheritance tax.

Over the previous 12 months, the cumulative wealth of India’s 100 billionaires elevated greater than $300 billion to $1.1 trillion, boosted by a inventory market growth, based on the Forbes record of the richest Indians printed this month.

($1 = 84.7760 Indian rupees)