Can't tax upper middle class more, says Piketty

FRENCH ECONOMIST THOMAS PIKETTY WAS A PLENARY SPEAKER AT THE DELHI SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

- P VAIDYANATHAN IYER

DESCRIBING INDIA'S DECISION to impose a wealth tax way back in 1957 as trying "to do too much too fast", French economist Thomas Piketty, regarded most for his passionate advocacy of taxing the wealth of billionaires to reduce inequalities, says there's no way the government can increase tax on the upper middle class and middle Indian entrepreneurs unless it demonstrates people at the top pay a higher tax rate.

In an interview, Piketty, who was a plenary speaker at the Delhi School of Economics on Saturday, said, "Building a sophisticated tax system to tax income and wealth is complicated. It's difficult even for rich countries. Today, what is different is you could do it much better because you have information technology, lots of new ways for better tax administration, and you could get quite a lot of tax revenue just by having a wealth tax targeted at the very, very top of the distribution."