Tax Time

No tax for her:

Ms. Yellen told reporters at a July 25 press conference during the G20 finance ministers meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that the United States thinks that a global agreement on taxing ultra-high-net-worth individuals is neither practical nor a particularly good idea. “Tax policy is very difficult to coordinate globally,” Ms. Yellen said. “We don’t see a need or really think it’s desirable to try to negotiate a global agreement on that.” The new global tax on billionaires was proposed by the European Union Tax Observatory last year, and last month, the Brazilian G20 presidency asked its researchers to lay out their proposal in more detail. French economist Gabriel Zucman, an architect of the proposal, has posited that individuals with more than $1 billion in net worth should be required to pay a minimum annual tax amounting to 2 percent of their wealth, according to a baseline version of what he calls an “ultra-high-net-worth tax.”

Too many of her friends would be affected...