Suppose you are the billionaire founder(创始人) of Veblen Luxe SA, a European company selling solid-gold luggage tags. How should you organise your financial affairs(安排财务事宜)? One option would be to hold your Veblen shares directly. But then you must pay income tax immediately when the company pays you dividend(股息，红利)s.
假设你是一家销售纯金行李牌的欧洲公司Veblen Luxe SA的亿万富翁创始人。你应该如何安排你的财务事务？一种选择是直接持有Veblen股份。但这样一来，当公司向你支付股息时，你必须立即缴纳所得税。
Your accountant might tell you it is wiser to put the shares in your holding company, Hespérides S.à r.l. In a holding company, dividends can pile up(累积，堆积) without trigger(触发，引起)ing much of an income-tax bill. True, you cannot spend the cash. But it can still be used for investments and some expenses. If you persuade a bank to lend you your spending money against your Hespérides shares, and dividends pile up faster than your debts, you may be able to keep borrowing and postpone(推迟，延期) income taxes indefinitely.
你的会计师可能会告诉你，将股份放入你的控股公司Hespérides S.à r.l.是更明智的做法。在控股公司中，股息可以累积而不会触发大量的所得税账单。确实，你不能花掉这些现金。但它仍可用于投资和一些开支。如果你说服银行以你的Hespérides股份为抵押借给你零花钱，并且股息累积速度快于你的债务，你可能能够持续借款并无限期推迟所得税。
It is such arrangements that Gabriel Zucman of the Paris School of Economics takes aim at(批评，抨击) in his short new book, “We Need to Tax Billionaires”. Mr Zucman, whom your columnist interviewed for our “Inside Economics” show, has arguably surpassed Thomas Piketty, his compatriot and erstwhile(以前的，曾经的) co-author, to become the favourite economist of left-wingers everywhere. His latest thesis is that holding companies allow the ultra-rich to pay taxes at far lower rates than most of the public, and even those who support flat (rather than strongly progressive) taxation should support new levies on wealth to level the playing field.
正是这样的安排，成为巴黎经济学院加布里埃尔·祖克曼在其简短新书《我们必须对亿万富翁征税》中攻击的目标。祖克曼先生（本专栏作者曾为我们的“内部经济学”节目采访过他）可以说已经超越了其同胞兼前合作者托马斯·皮凯蒂，成为全球左翼人士最青睐的经济学家。他的最新论点是，控股公司使得超级富豪以远低于大多数公众的税率纳税，甚至那些支持单一税率（而非强力累进税制）的人也应支持新的财富税，以创造公平的竞争环境。
Crossing the Piketty line
跨越皮凯蒂界限