Economist warns against wealth tax to pay for pandemic

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

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.