Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman
The proposal of wealth taxation is coming back, in response to rising public debts and to the increase in inequality in Western countries, following the work by Piketty and Zucman (2014). Studies (Knoll et al. 2014, Bonnet et al. 2014) have made the three striking observations:
The housing component of national private wealth is explained by the spectacular rise of wealth relative to national income in several countries.
Housing wealth as the sum of two elements – structures and developed land – is mostly driven by the rise in housing prices.
Rising land values can explain most of the trends in the UK and in France.