The sharp deterioration of the public finances in
many countries has revived interest in a “capital levy”—
a one-off tax on private wealth—as an exceptional
measure to restore debt sustainability. ¹
The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance
is possible and there is a belief that it will never be
repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen
by some as fair). There have been illustrious supporters,
including Pigou, Ricardo, Schumpeter, and—until he
changed his mind—Keynes. The conditions for success
are strong, but also need to be weighed against the risks
of the alternatives, which include repudiating public
debt or inflating it away (these, in turn, are a particular
form of wealth tax—on bondholders—that also falls on
nonresidents).

There is a surprisingly large amount of experience to
draw on, as such levies were widely adopted in Europe
after World War I and in Germany and Japan after
World War II. Reviewed in Eichengreen (1990), this
experience suggests that more notable than any loss of
credibility was a simple failure to achieve debt reduction,
largely because the delay in introduction gave
space for extensive avoidance and capital flight—in turn
spurring inflation.

The tax rates needed to bring down public debt to
precrisis levels, moreover, are sizable: reducing debt
ratios to end-2007 levels would require (for a sample of
15 euro area countries) a tax rate of about 10 percent
on households with positive net wealth.²

1. As for instance in Bach (2012).

2. IMF staff calculation using the Eurosystem’s Household
Finance and Consumption Survey (Household Finance and
Consumption Network, 2013); unweighted average.