A wealth tax is a bad way to pay off pandemic debts: Nobel economist

Angus Deaton said that levies on high-earners would be 'very difficult to implement' and give the wealthy 'huge incentives to avoid it'

A wealth tax is a bad way to pay off pandemic debts and probably would become permanent if introduced, Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton said.

Levies on high-earners would be “very difficult to implement” and give the wealthy “huge incentives to avoid it — and avoid it they will,” said Deaton, a Princeton University professor who is working on an official study of inequality in the UK.

The remarks brush against a growing number of politicians calling for the richest to shoulder more of the burden of the record borrowing taken on by governments to prop up economies hit by Covid-19. The