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Wikipedia

Wealth tax

March 20, 2023

"Capital tax" redirects here. For taxes on investment income, see capital gains tax.
For the tax formerly targeting wealthy minorities in Turkey, see Varlık Vergisi.
Not to be confused with capital levy.

A wealth tax (also called a capital tax or equity tax) is a tax on an entity's holdings of assets. This includes the total value of personal assets, including cash, bank deposits, real estate, assets in insurance and pension plans, ownership of unincorporated businesses, financial securities, and personal trusts (a one-off levy on wealth is a capital levy).[1] Typically, liabilities (primarily mortgages and other loans) are deducted from an individual's wealth, hence it is sometimes called a net wealth tax.

As of 2017, five of the 36 OECD countries had a personal wealth tax (down from 12 in 1990).[2]

Proponents note that it can reduce income inequality by reducing the accumulation of large amounts of wealth by individuals.[1] Critics note that a wealth tax can cause wealthy entrepreneurs and businesspeople to leave the country and move their wealth to a more tax friendly nation.[3]

In practice

Some jurisdictions[clarification needed] require declaration of the taxpayer's balance sheet (assets and liabilities), and from that ask for a tax on net worth (assets minus liabilities), as a percentage of the net worth, or a percentage of the net worth exceeding a certain level. Wealth taxes can be limited to natural persons or they can be extended to also cover legal persons such as corporations.[4] In 1990, about a dozen European countries had a wealth tax, but by 2019, all but three had eliminated the tax because of the difficulties and costs associated with both design and enforcement.[5][6] Belgium, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland are the countries that raised revenue from net wealth taxes on individuals in 2019 with net wealth taxes accounting for 1.1% of overall tax revenues in Norway, 0.55% in Spain, and 3.6% in Switzerland for 2017.[6]

According to an OECD study on wealth taxes, it is "difficult to firmly argue that wealth taxes would have negative effects on entrepreneurship. The magnitude of the effects of wealth taxes on entrepreneurship is also unclear".[7]

A 2022 study found that wealth taxes are most likely to be implemented in the aftermath of major economic recessions.[8]

Current examples

  • Argentina: It is named Impuesto sobre los Bienes Personales. For assets held within Argentina, the tax is progressive from 0.50% on assets above ARS 3,000,000 (approx. US$32,000 at April 2021 official exchange rate) to 1.25% on assets above ARS 18,000,000 (approx. US$193,000 at April 2021 official exchange rate).[9] For assets held outside of Argentina, the tax is progressive from 0.70% on assets above ARS 3,000,000 to 2.25% on assets above ARS 18,000,000.[10]
  • Colombia: On January 1, 2019, the Senate passed a tax reform bill that includes a lower corporate tax rate, a new tax rate for financial corporations, and a new wealth tax. For the years 2019, 2020, and 2021, the new wealth (equity) tax has been set at 1% for Colombian-resident individuals' worldwide net worth, and 1% for non-resident individuals on Colombian properties only, such as real estate, yachts, artwork, vessels, ships, and other assets with a net equity of at least COP5 billion (US$1.5 million). Shares in Colombian firms, accounts receivable from Colombian debtors, some portfolio assets, and financial lease agreements are all exempt from the tax.[11] Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the richest Colombians will face higher taxes on wages, dividends, and properties, as well as a one-time "solidarity levy" on high incomes. All of which is part of a new bill that was sent to congress in April 2021. The bill aims to collect about 25 trillion pesos (US$6.9 billion) a year through new taxes and budget restraints, equating to 2.2 percent of GDP.[12]
  • France: Until 2017, there was a solidarity tax on wealth on any net assets above €800,000 for those with total net worth of €1,300,000 or more. Marginal rates ranged from 0.5% to 1.5%.[13] In 2007, it collected €4.07 billion, accounting for 1.4% of total revenue.[14] From 2018 onwards, it has been replaced by a wealth tax on real estate, exonerating all financial assets.[15]
  • Spain: There is a tax called Patrimonio. The tax rate is progressive, from 0.2 to 3.75% of net assets above the threshold of €700,000 after €300,000 primary residence allowance.[16] The exact amount varies between regions.
  • Netherlands: There is a tax called vermogensrendementheffing. Although its name (wealth yield tax) suggests that it is a tax on the yield of wealth, it qualifies as a wealth tax, since the actual yield (whether positive or negative) is not taken into account in its calculation. Up to and including 2016, the rate was fixed at 1.2% (30% taxation over an assumed yield of 4%). From the fiscal year of 2017 onwards, the tax rate progresses with wealth. See Income tax in the Netherlands. In addition to the vermogensrendementheffing, owners of real estate pay a tax called onroerendezaakbelasting, which is based on the estimated value of the real estate they own. This is a local tax, levied by the city council where the property is located.
  • Norway: 0.7% (municipal) and 0.15% (national) a total of 0.85% levied on net assets exceeding 1,500,000 kr (approx. US$170,000) as of 2019.[17] For tax purposes, the value of the primary residence is valued to 25% of the market value, secondary residences to 90% of the market value, while working capital such as commercial real estate, stocks, and stock funds are valued at various percentages.[18] The Conservative Party, Progress Party and the Liberal Party have stated that they aim to reduce and eventually eliminate the wealth tax.[19]
  • Switzerland: A progressive wealth tax that varies by residence location. Most cantons have no wealth tax for individual net worth less than SFr 100000 (approx. US$100,000) and progressively raise the tax rate on net assets with a top rate ranging from 0.13% to 0.94% depending on canton and municipality of residence.[20] Wealth tax is levied against worldwide assets of Swiss residents, but it is not levied against assets in Switzerland held by non-residents.[20][21]
  • Italy: Two wealth taxes are imposed. One, IVIE, is a 0.76% tax imposed on real assets held outside Italy. The values of such assets are determined by purchase price or current market value. Property taxes paid in the country where the real estate exists can offset IVIE. Another tax, IVAFE, is 0.20% and is levied on all financial assets located outside the country, including, so far as the language seems to imply, individual pension schemes such as 401(k)s and IRAs in the US.[22]
  • Belgium: The Act of 7 February 2018, which is effectively a "wealth tax," imposes a 0.15% annual tax on financial instruments kept in securities accounts worth more than €500,000.[23]

Historical examples

Ancient Athens had a wealth tax called eisphora (see symmoria), and a wealth registry consisting of self-assessments (τίμημα), limited to the wealthiest. The registry was not very accurate.[24]: p.159 

Iceland had a wealth tax until 2006 and a temporary wealth tax reintroduced in 2010 for four years. The tax was levied at a rate of 1.5% on net assets exceeding 75,000,000 kr for individuals and 100,000,000 kr for married couples.[citation needed]

Similar to Iceland, Denmark taxed household income above a certain exemption threshold, which was about the 98th percentile of the wealth distribution, until 1997. A dozen OECD countries imposed similar taxes until the 1990s, but the Danish wealth tax was the highest of its kind. Until the late 1980s, the marginal tax rate on wealth was 2.2 percent, leading to a very high rate on the return on wealth. After minimizing the tax for some years, the Danish government eventually abolished the tax altogether in 1997.[25]

Some other European countries have discontinued this kind of tax in recent years: Germany (1997), Finland (2006), Luxembourg (2006) and Sweden (2007).[26]

In the United Kingdom and other countries, property (real estate) is often a person's main asset, and has been taxed – for example, the window tax of 1696, the rates, to some extent the Council Tax.

Proposed examples

USA

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders included a billionaire wealth tax in their campaign platforms during the 2020 United States Presidential Election. A February, 2020, poll found 67% of registered American voters supported a wealth tax on billionaires, with support at 85% of Democrats, 66% of independent voters, and 47% of Republicans.[27] While commentators have raised concerns:

The reality is that in order to actually raise the amount of money progressives like Warren [and Sanders] want to spend, they'd almost certainly need to tax a much larger base: the 'working rich.' They're some of the wiliest folks around, ready to move money overseas or engage in tricky tactics to avoid the prying hands of the federal government if incentivized to do so. Many countries that have implemented wealth taxes have later reversed those decisions due to capital flight and impracticalities of enforcement, including Austria, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Every time Warren talks about her paid-for wish list proposals, she's talking about taxing the working rich. The reason why it never happens, though, is because it would be political suicide to tax such a key constituency.[28]

France

In France, the left candidate at the presidential election of 2022, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, proposed to tax the wealth income as the labour income. Also he wanted to increase inheritance tax on the highest estates by accounting for all gifts and inheritances received throughout life and create a maximum inheritance of 12 million euros (i.e. 100 times the median net wealth). [29]

Germany

In order to bridge the wealth gap between rich and poor in Germany, the Social Democratic Party of Germany called for a nationwide wealth tax to be reintroduced in 2019.[30] According to the proposed tax reform, wealthy households would be required to pay an extra tax between 1% and 1.5%. A single household would need to pay 1% of their net worth on every euro surpassing €2 Million and married couple would have to pay for every euro surpassing €4 Million. A married household with a combined net worth of €4.2 Million would have to pay an annual wealth tax of €2,000.[31] The proposition was eventually vetoed by the CDU/CSU and therefore never again considered.[32]

Concentration of wealth

Main article: Wealth concentration

In 2014, French economist Thomas Piketty published a widely discussed[failed verification][opinion] book entitled Capital in the Twenty-First Century that starts with the observation that economic inequality is increasing and proposes wealth taxes as a countermeasure. The central thesis of the book is that inequality is not an accident, but rather a feature of capitalism, and can only be reversed through state interventionism. The book thus argues that unless capitalism is reformed, the very democratic order will be threatened. At the core of this thesis is the notion that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is the concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability. Piketty proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes to help reduce inequality and avoid the trend towards a vast majority of wealth coming under the control of a tiny minority. This analysis was hailed as a major and important work by some economists.[33] Other economists have challenged Piketty's proposals and interpretations.[34][35][36][37][38][39][excessive citations]

France

In 2017, when introducing the fiscal reform of the solidarity wealth tax, the government of the French president Emmanuel Macron used the first argument of capital flight. The other argument stated by the comity of evaluation of reforms on wealth fiscalism was that the previous wealth tax was not enough progressive for the top 0.1% wealthier. The “IFI” as the “ISF” are wealth tax thus they concerned high earners. A big part of people paying this tax are in the ninth decile of income distribution and the “IFI” represents one over two household in the wealthiest 0.01%. Therefore, in the general tax system, the “IFI” contributes, as did the ISF, to make the tax system more progressive. But this progressivity has limits: “the IFI represents on average 0.1% of income around the ninth decile and 1.2% of income of 0.1% of very well-off households in 2018. While the income tax rate under the ISF was stable overall, within the top 0.1% of income, the income tax rate under of the IFI declines for the wealthiest and falls to 0.6% for the top 0.01%.” [40] Broadly, this reform largely benefits to the 0.1% wealthier and did not make this wealth tax more progressive as it was supposed to be. In fact, it reduced the number of accountable people of wealth tax leaving the country but in term of investment, the gains of this reforms has been traduced in an increasing of dividend on capital earnings (37.4 billion from non-financial society had been paid) and not on direct investment on corporate (see “Capital flight”). In average and from different studies, those fiscal reforms benefited more to top-wealthier households. For Ben Jelloul and al. (2019), the reforms benefit for the top 1% more wealthier household with +5.5 point of disposable revenue. For Madec and al. (2019) it had affected on the top 2% of the wealthier households and for Pasquier and Sicsic (2019), the 5% of the top distribution perceived 57% of the gain of the fiscal reform.[41]

Revenue

Revenue from a wealth tax scheme depends largely on the presence of net wealth and wealth inequality within the target country. Revenue depends on the plan that is in place, but it generally can be modeled as  , where t represents the tax rate and w is the amount of wealth affected by that tax rate.[42] Many plans include tax brackets, where a certain portion of the individual's wealth will be taxed at a given rate and any wealth beyond that amount will be taxed at a different rate.

A small number of countries have been using wealth tax regimes for some time. Revenues earned from wealth tax schemes vary by country from 0.98% of GDP in Switzerland to 0.22% in France, for example.[43] 2020 United States presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren claimed a wealth tax plan could generate 1.4% of GDP in revenue for the United States.[44]

According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the revenues generated from wealth taxes account for about 0.46% of all tax revenue on average in 2018 for countries which have wealth tax schemes in place. However this varies from country to country, the highest would be that of Luxembourg where it accounted for 7.18% of total tax revenue in 2018, the lowest would be Germany where it accounted for 0.03% of total tax revenue in 2018.

Wealth Tax Revenues by Country (US dollars, Billions) in 2018[43]
Country Recurrent Tax on Net Wealth Total Tax Revenue Wealth Tax over Total Tax Revenue
Luxembourg 1.995 27.8 7.18%
Switzerland 9.396 197.1 4.77%
Norway 2.470 169.6 1.46%
Spain 2.618 490.5 0.53%
Belgium 1.123 238.4 0.47%
Hungary 0.154 56.9 0.27%
France 2.166 1280.1 0.17%
Canada 0.335 564.8 0.06%
Germany 0.471 1526 0.03%

Estimates for a wealth tax's potential revenue in the United States vary. Several Democratic presidential candidates in the 2020 election have proposed wealth tax plans. Elizabeth Warren, for example, has proposed a wealth tax of 2% on net wealth above $50 million and 6% above $1 billion.[45] The conservative-leaning nonprofit Tax Foundation estimates revenue generated by Senator Warren's proposal would total around $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years.[46] Separate estimates from campaign advisors and economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman put the revenue at about 1% of GDP per year, in alignment with USD revenue estimates.[44][42] These estimates put Senator Warren's tax plan revenues at about $200 billion in 2020.[46] The sum of United States tax revenues in 2018 were $5 trillion in 2018,[43] meaning the tax collected by this plan would be equal to 4% of current tax revenues. Additionally, the Tax Foundation estimates 2020 presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders' wealth tax plan[47] would collect $3.2 trillion between 2020 and 2029.[46]

Previous proposals for a wealth tax in the United States had already existed. Senator Huey Long of Louisiana proposed a wealth tax as part of his Share Our Wealth movement in 1934.[48] Eileen Myles proposed a net assets tax in her presidential campaign in 1992,[49] as did Donald Trump during his presidential campaign in 2000.[50]

A net wealth tax may also be designed to be revenue-neutral if it is used to broaden the tax base, stabilize the economy, and reduce individual income and other taxes.

Effect on investment

A wealth tax serves as a negative reinforcer ("use it or lose it"), which incentivizes the productive use of assets (rather than letting assets accumulate without being used). According to University of Pennsylvania Law School professors David Shakow and Reed Shuldiner, "a wealth tax also taxes capital that is not productively employed. Thus, a wealth tax can be viewed as a tax on potential income from capital."[51] Net wealth taxes can complement rather than replace gift taxes, capital gains taxes, and inheritance taxes to increase administrability and the effectiveness of enforcement efforts.

In their article, "Investment Effects of Wealth Taxes Under Uncertainty and Irreversibility," Rainer Niemann and Caren Sureth-Sloane found that the effects of wealth taxation on investment mainly depends upon the tax method employed and the broadness of the wealth threshold for taxation.[52] Niemann and Sureth-Sloane found that, "Broadening the wealth tax base tends to accelerate investment during high interest rate periods." Caren Sureth and Ralf Maiterth concluded that wealth tax revenues from entrepreneurs may decrease in the long term and the revenue from a wealth tax may be negative if the wealth taxation thresholds are too low.[53]

Saez and Zucman are two economists that worked on the "Ultra-Millionaire Tax" proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren. In their paper, "Progressive Wealth Taxation," they assert that a potential wealth tax in the United States needs necessary parameters to limit detrimental effects on investment.[54] One parameter is a high wealth threshold to limit direct taxation on small business and entrepreneurship. The academic literature on the effects of wealth taxation on investment incentives are inconclusive in the United States; Saez and Zucman assert there are three reasons wealth taxes in European countries are weak comparisons to the United States when analyzing potential effects on investment. First, they claim tax competition between European countries allows for individuals to avoid taxation by allocating assets to a different country. Reallocating assets to avoid taxation is more difficult in the United States because tax filings apply equally to United States citizens no matter the country of current residence.[55] Second, low exemption thresholds caused liquidity problems for some individuals who were on the lower end of wealth taxation thresholds. Third, they contend European wealth taxes need modernization and improved methods for systematic information gathering.

Further proponents for a wealth tax claim it could have positive effects on investment in the United States. Some extremely wealthy people use their assets in unproductive ways.[56] For example, an entrepreneur could generate much higher returns (though could conversely lose much more capital operating on leverage) than a wealthy individual with a conservative investment such as United States Treasury Bonds.

A wealth tax could lead to negative effects on investment, saving, and economic growth. In the article, "Economic effects of wealth taxation," Kyle Pomerleau states, "A wealth tax, even levied at an apparently low annual rate, places a significant burden on saving."[57] The degree of this impact on savings and investments is reliant on the openness of the United States economy. A wealth tax would shrink national saving and increase foreign ownership of assets. The potential decrease in national savings leads to a decrease in capital stock. An estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model indicates that if the revenue from the wealth tax proposed by Elizabeth Warren were used to finance non-productive government spending, GDP would decrease by 2.1 percent by 2050, capital stock would decrease by 6.5 percent, and wages would decrease by 2.3 percent.[58] Some opponents also point out that redistribution through a wealth tax is an inherently counterintuitive way to foster economic growth. Richard Epstein, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, contents, "The classical liberal approach wants to simplify taxation and reduce regulation to spur growth. Plain old growth is a much better social tonic that the toxic Warren Wealth Tax."[59]

Housing and consumer debt

Unlike property taxes that fall on the full value of a property, a net wealth tax only taxes equity (value above debt). This could benefit those with mortgages, student loans, automobile loans, consumer loans, etc.[citation needed]

Criticisms

There are many arguments against the implementation of a wealth tax, including claims that a wealth tax would be unconstitutional (in the United States), that property would be too hard to value, and that wealth taxes would reduce the rate of innovation.

Capital flight

A 2006 article in The Washington Post titled "Old Money, New Money Flee France and Its Wealth Tax" pointed out some of the harm caused by France's wealth tax. The article gave examples of how the tax caused capital flight, brain drain, loss of jobs, and, ultimately, a net loss in tax revenue. Among other things, the article stated, "Éric Pichet, author of a French tax guide, estimates the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998."[60][61]

In fact the wealth tax named "Impôt sur les Grandes Fortunes" (IGF) ["tax on great wealth"] had been created in 1980, then suppressed in 1986 before finally being reintroduced in 1988 under the name “Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune” (ISF) ["solidarity tax on wealth"]. In 1999 a new higher tax category was added which increased the money collected from 0.09% of GDP in 1990 to 0.16% in 2004.

For example, in 2003, 370 ISF’s accountables people left France and it continued to grow year by year except between 2010 and 2011 when the tax threshold has been raised and accountable people were discarded from it. This capital flight only decrease after 2015 and in 2017 when the French government announced that it will suppress this tax. After the reforms implementation, there were only 163 departures of wealth tax people in 2018 [62] The capital flight was one of the argument to reforms the wealth tax. After 2017, in the financial law of 2018, the new wealth tax was introduced with other tax reforms. The fiscal reform thus included a unique forfeit tax on saving, combined with the replacement of ISF by the IFI “Impôt sur la Fortune Immobilière” (IFI) which reduce the wealth tax to real-estate propriety only and finally a decrease of the corporate tax. This argument of capital flight takes its roots on an economic theory, the runoff theory. By decreasing the wealth tax, the wealth households are supposed to come back inside the country to invest and thus raised the GDP growth which will have effect on all the population by reducing unemployment and boost the economy. In France, the fiscal reform did not have the expected effects of runoff. In fact, the capital flight due to wealth tax household leaving only represented 0.3% and 0.5% of the total amount of money collected by the solidarity tax on wealth, between 2004 and 2015. On the other hand, this decrease of the wealth tax represented an income loss of 2.9 billion for the state [63]

In term of investment, there were fewer investments in real-estate from people accountable of wealth tax. However, this movement could be explained more by the increase in household income, the low level of interest rates on mortgage loans and the general dynamics of the real estate market than by a sale, on the part of wealthy households, of property subject to the IFI for the benefit of investments in transferable securities, therefore the result in investment on corporate are not significant. Moreover, the fiscal reform on wealth tax had an insignificant level at the macroeconomic level for the corporate funds. For example, in 2020 for the non-financial society, the part of listed and non-listed share has been lower from the average of the previous period 2001-2019. It is also hard to measure the effect on corporate investment because of the Covid-19 crises which caused a shut-down of the economy in 2020.[64]

Valuation issues

In 2012, the Wall Street Journal wrote that: "the wealth tax has a fatal flaw: valuation. It has been estimated that 62% of the wealth of the top 1% is "non-financial" – i.e., vehicles, real estate, and (most importantly) private business. Private businesses account for nearly 40% of their wealth and are the largest single category." A particular issue for small business owners is that they cannot accurately value their private business until it is sold. Furthermore, business owners could easily make their businesses look much less valuable than they really are, through accounting, valuations and assumptions about the future. "Even the rich don't know exactly what they're worth in any given moment."[65]

Examples of such fraud and malfeasance were revealed in 2013, when French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac was discovered shifting financial assets into Swiss bank accounts in order to avoid the wealth tax. After further investigation, a French finance ministry official said, "A number of government officials minimised their wealth, by negligence or with intent, but without exceeding 5–10 per cent of their real worth ... however, there are some who have deliberately tried to deceive the authorities."[66] Yet again, in October 2014, France's Finance chairman and President of the National Assembly, Gilles Carrez, was found to have avoided paying the French wealth tax (ISF) for three years by applying a 30 percent tax allowance on one of his homes. However, he had previously converted the home into an SCI, a private, limited company to be used for rental purposes. The 30 percent allowance does not apply to SCI holdings. Once this was revealed, Carrez declared, "if the tax authorities think that I should pay the wealth tax, I won't argue." Carrez is one of more than 60 French parliamentarians battling with the tax offices over 'dodgy' asset declarations.[67]

Moreover, this problem of wealth devaluation is undermined by the administration itself. For example, in France in 1999, the government introduced the notion of “the measured application of the tax law”.[68] But this application of the law is mostly reserved for the self-declared tax, like the wealth tax. Its mean that if there is a fraud in the declaration, there will be no sanction if the household concerned correct his mistake, even if it might have been done in purpose. This flexibility granted to self-declared taxes is indeed unequal. In fact the other tax that concerned most of the households, like income taxes, can’t be self-declared and this fraud flexibility benefits only to the richer household. More broadly, this self-declaration tax has developed what the sociologist Alexis Spire called “tax law domestication”, which enable richest part of the population to employed fiscal specialist to optimize their declaration and minimize the amount of the wealth tax. Once again those opportunity of optimization, as the flexibility in sanctions are unequally distributed in the tax spectrum and thus in the different part of the population.

Social effects

Opponents of wealth taxes have argued that there is "an undercurrent of envy in the campaign against extremes of wealth."[69] Two Yale University/London School of Economics studies (2006, 2008) on relative income yielded results asserting that 50 percent of the public would prefer to earn less money, as long as they earned as much or more than their neighbor.[70][71]

Many analysts and scholars[who?] assert that since wealth taxes are a form of direct asset collection, as well as double-taxation, they are antithetical to personal freedom and individual liberty. They further contend that free nations should have no business helping themselves arbitrarily to the personal belongings of any group of its citizens.[72] Further, these opponents may say wealth taxes place the authority of the government ahead of the rights of the individual, and ultimately undermine the concept of personal sovereignty. The Daily Telegraph editor Allister Heath critically described wealth taxes as Marxian in concept and ethically destructive to the values of democracies, "Taxing already acquired property drastically alters the relationship between citizen and state: we become leaseholders, rather than freeholders, with accumulated taxes over long periods of time eventually "returning" our wealth to the state. It breaches a key principle that has made this country great: the gradual expansion of property ownership and the democratisation of wealth."[73]

Past repeals

In 2004, a study by the Institut de l'enterprise investigated why several European countries were eliminating wealth taxes and made the following observations: 1. Wealth taxes contributed to capital drain, promoting the flight of capital as well as discouraging investors from coming in. 2. Wealth taxes had high management cost and relatively low returns. 3. Wealth taxes distorted resource allocation, particularly involving certain exemptions and unequal valuation of assets. In its summary, the institute found that the "wealth taxes were not as equitable as they appeared".[74]

In a 2011 study, the London School of Economics examined wealth taxes that were being considered by the Labour party in the United Kingdom between 1974 and 1976 but were ultimately abandoned. The findings of the study revealed that the British evaluated similar programs in other countries and determined that the Spanish wealth tax may have contributed to a banking crisis and the French wealth tax had been undergoing review by its government for being unpopular and overly complex. As efforts progressed, concerns were developing over the practicality and implementation of wealth taxes as well as worry that they would undermine confidence in the British economy. Eventually, plans were dropped. Former British Chancellor Denis Healey concluded that attempting to implement wealth taxes was a mistake, "We had committed ourselves to a Wealth Tax: but in five years I found it impossible to draft one which would yield enough revenue to be worth the administrative cost and political hassle." The conclusion of the study stated that there were lingering questions, such as the impacts on personal saving and small business investment, consequences of capital flight, complexity of implementation, and ability to raise predicted revenues that must be adequately addressed before further consideration of wealth taxes.[75]

Legal impediments

United States

See also Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.; Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

In part because a wealth tax has never been implemented in the United States, there is no legal consensus about its constitutionality. As evidenced below, much scholarly debate on the topic hinges on whether or not such a tax is understood to be a "direct tax," per Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which requires that the burden of "direct taxes" be apportioned across the states by their population.

Barry L. Isaacs interprets current case law in the United States to hold that a wealth tax is a direct tax under Article 1, Section 9.[76][77] Given the extreme difficulty of apportioning a wealth tax by state population, the implementation of a wealth tax in the United States would require either a constitutional amendment or the overturning of current case law.[78] Unlike federal wealth taxes, states and localities are not bound by Article 1, Section 9, which is why they are able to levy taxes on real estate.[79]

Other legal scholars have argued that a wealth tax does not represent a direct tax and that such a tax could be implemented in the United States without a constitutional amendment. In a lengthy essay from 2018, authors in the Indiana Journal of Law argued that "... the belief that the U.S. Constitution effectively makes a national wealth tax impossible ... is wrong."[80]: 112  The authors noted that in the 1796 Supreme Court decision for Hylton v. United States, Supreme Court justices who had personally taken part in the creation of the U.S. Constitution "unanimously rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of an annual tax on carriages, a tax akin to a national wealth tax in that it taxed a luxury property."[80]: 114  However, Alexander Hamilton, who supported the carriage tax, told the Supreme Court that it was constitutional because it was an "excise tax", not a direct tax. Hamilton's brief defines direct taxes as "Capitation or poll taxes, taxes on lands and buildings, general assessments, whether on the whole property of individuals or on their whole real or personal estate" which would include the wealth tax.[81] Tax scholars have repeatedly noted that the critical difference between income taxes and wealth taxes, the realization requirement, is a matter of administrative convenience, not a constitutional requirement.[citation needed]

To prevent capital flight, proponents of wealth taxes have argued for the implementation of a one-time exit tax on high net worth individuals who renounce their citizenship and leave the country.[82] An additional constitutional objection to such a tax could be raised on the grounds that it violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the federal government from taking private property for public use without just compensation.[83]

Germany

The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in Karlsruhe found that wealth taxes "would need to be confiscatory in order to bring about any real redistribution". In addition, the court held that the sum of wealth tax and income tax should not be greater than half of a taxpayer's income. "The tax thus gives rise to a dilemma: either it is ineffective in fighting inequalities, or it is confiscatory – and it is for that reason that the Germans chose to eliminate it." Thus, finding such wealth taxes unconstitutional in 1995.[84] In 2006, the Constitutional Court revised this decision on the so-called "Halbteilungsgrundsatz", stating that "From the property guarantee of the Basic Law, no generally binding absolute upper limit of taxation in the vicinity of a half division can be derived."[85]

See also

References

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  2. ^ "Global Revenue Statistics Database".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ^ Pichet, Eric (June 17, 2011). "The Economic Consequences of the French Wealth Tax". SSRN 1268381.
  4. ^ "Taxation of Wealth" See. Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV, Is Incorporation Really Better Than Central Management and Control for Testing Corporate Residency? An Answer to Corporate Tax Evasion and Inversion, 43 Ohio N.U.L. Rev. 359 (2017).
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  6. ^ a b Zeballos-Roig, Joseph. "4 European countries still have a wealth tax. Here's how much success they've each had". Business Insider. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  7. ^ "The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD". OECD Tax Policy Studies. OECD. 26: 114.
  8. ^ Limberg, Julian; Seelkopf, Laura (2022). "The historical origins of wealth taxation". Journal of European Public Policy. 29 (5): 670–688. doi:10.1080/13501763.2021.1992486. ISSN 1350-1763. S2CID 245307172.
  9. ^ "Bienes Personales for Assets within Argentina". Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos. April 27, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  10. ^ "Bienes Personales for Assets outside of Argentina". Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos. April 27, 2021. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
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  14. ^ French wealth tax explained in full in The Connexion
  15. ^ "There has never been a better time to invest in France". Financial Times. May 17, 2018. Retrieved August 9, 2018.
  16. ^ "Tramos en el Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio: tipo impositivo". Rankia. May 13, 2014.
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  22. ^ [1], agenziaentrate.gov.it/
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  24. ^ Christ, Matthew R. (1990). "Liturgy Avoidance and Antidosis in Classical Athens". Transactions of the American Philological Association. 120: 147–169. doi:10.2307/283983. JSTOR 283983.
  25. ^ Jakobsen, Katrine; Jakobsen, Kristian; Kleven, Henrik; Zucman, Gabriel (2019). "Wealth Taxation and Wealth Accumulation: Theory and Evidence From Denmark". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 135 (1): 328–388. doi:10.1093/qje/qjz032.
  26. ^ "Sweden axes wealth tax". www.ft.com. Retrieved March 28, 2007.
  27. ^ Gabriela Schulte (February 26, 2020). "Poll: Two-thirds of voters say billionaires should pay a wealth tax".
  28. ^ Wolfe, Liz (April 5, 2022). "Elizabeth Warren's Wealth Tax Would Hurt More Than Just the 'Tippy Top'". reason.com. Reason. Retrieved April 6, 2022.
  29. ^ l'AEC.fr, Chapitre 50: "Partage des richesses: faire la révolution fiscale" https://laec.fr/section/50/faire-la-revolution-fiscale
  30. ^ Welle (www.dw.com), Deutsche. "Can a wealth tax bridge Germany's divide between rich and poor? | DW | 27.08.2019". DW.COM. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  31. ^ Zeitung, Süddeutsche. "SPD will Vermögensteuer wieder einführen". Süddeutsche.de (in German). Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  32. ^ "ZEIT ONLINE | Lesen Sie zeit.de mit Werbung oder im PUR-Abo. Sie haben die Wahl". www.zeit.de. Retrieved April 22, 2021.
  33. ^ "Massive new data set suggests inequality is about to get even worse", The Washington Post, 2018
  34. ^ "Piketty's theory about the increase in the return of capital in relation to labor is patently wrong, as anyone who has witnessed the rise of what is called the 'knowledge economy' (or anyone who has had investments in general) knows." Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game (2018), Random House
  35. ^ "Thomas Piketty Is Wrong: America Will Never Look Like a Jane Austen Novel", New Republic, 2014
  36. ^ "Thomas Piketty's Wealth Illusion", Barrons, August 5, 2014
  37. ^ "What Piketty Gets Wrong About Capitalism", Reason, May 23, 2014
  38. ^ "Thomas Piketty's Wrong Conclusions on Rising U.S. Income Inequality", U.S. News & World Report, June 5, 2014
  39. ^ "Inequality a Piketty Problem?", The Economist, May 24, 2014.
  40. ^ DHERBECOURT Clément, LOPEZ FORERO Margarita, « Quelle taxation du capital, avant et après la réforme de 2018 ? », La note d'analyse, 2019/4 (n° 81), p. 1-11. DOI : 10.3917/lna.081.0001. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-la-note-d-analyse-2019-4-page-1.htm
  41. ^ COMITÉ D’ÉVALUATION DES RÉFORMES DE LA FISCALITÉ DU CAPITAL, "Premier rapport", 10/2019, p.209, URL: https://www.strategie.gouv.fr/sites/strategie.gouv.fr/files/atoms/files/fs-2019-fiscalite-capital-01-10-2019.pdf
  42. ^ a b Saez, Zucman (September 4, 2019). "Progressive Wealth Taxation" (PDF). Brookings.
  43. ^ a b c OECD (2020), "Revenue Statistics: Comparative tables", OECD Tax Statistics (database),https://doi.org/10.1787/data-00262-en (accessed on 17 February 2020).
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  51. ^ Shakow, David and Shuldiner, Reed, Symposium on Wealth Taxes Part II, New York University School of Law Tax Law Review, 53 Tax L. Rev. 499, 506 Summer, 2000
  52. ^ Niemann, Rainer (2015). "Investment Effects of Wealth Taxes Under Uncertainty and Irreversibility" (PDF). International Taxation Research Paper. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2685104. S2CID 386291.
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  77. ^ See, for example, the United States Supreme Court case of Fernandez v. Wiener, in which the Court stated that a direct tax is a tax "which falls upon the owner merely because he is owner, regardless of his use or disposition of the property." Fernandez v. Wiener, 326 U.S. 340, 66 S. Ct. 178, 45–2 U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) ¶10,239 (1945).
  78. ^ Jensen, Erik M. (2004) "Interpreting the Sixteenth Amendment (By Way of the Direct-Tax Clauses)" 21 Const. Comment. 355
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  81. ^ Feldman, Noah (January 30, 2019). "Wealth Tax's Legality Depends on What 'Direct' Means". Bloomberg News.
  82. ^ Homan, Timothy R. (October 18, 2019). "Warren's surge brings new scrutiny to signature wealth tax". The Hill. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  83. ^ Griffith, Joel (April 30, 2019). "Elizabeth Warren's 'Wealth Tax' Has Three Strikes Against It: Here's Why". Heritage Foundation.
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  85. ^ Der Spiegel. Staat darf über 50 Prozent Steuern kassieren, March 16, 2006

Further reading

  • Alexandra Thornton and Galen Hendricks, Ending Special Tax Treatment for the Very Wealthy, Center for American Progress, 4 June 2019. Ending Special Tax Treatment for the Very Wealthy The report summarizes the problem (gross inequality) and its cause ("special tax treatment for the [extremely rich]"), and specific "ways to rebalance the tax code and put the economy on a better track."
  • Scheuer, Florian; Slemrod, Joel (August 2, 2020). "Taxation and the Superrich". Annual Review of Economics. 12 (1): 189–211.
  • Scheuer, Florian; Slemrod, Joel. 2021. "Taxing Our Wealth." Journal of Economic Perspectives.

March 20, 2023
wealth, capital, redirects, here, taxes, investment, income, capital, gains, formerly, targeting, wealthy, minorities, turkey, varlık, vergisi, confused, with, capital, levy, neutrality, this, article, disputed, relevant, discussion, found, talk, page, please,. Capital tax redirects here For taxes on investment income see capital gains tax For the tax formerly targeting wealthy minorities in Turkey see Varlik Vergisi Not to be confused with capital levy The neutrality of this article is disputed Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met June 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message A wealth tax also called a capital tax or equity tax is a tax on an entity s holdings of assets This includes the total value of personal assets including cash bank deposits real estate assets in insurance and pension plans ownership of unincorporated businesses financial securities and personal trusts a one off levy on wealth is a capital levy 1 Typically liabilities primarily mortgages and other loans are deducted from an individual s wealth hence it is sometimes called a net wealth tax As of 2017 update five of the 36 OECD countries had a personal wealth tax down from 12 in 1990 2 Proponents note that it can reduce income inequality by reducing the accumulation of large amounts of wealth by individuals 1 Critics note that a wealth tax can cause wealthy entrepreneurs and businesspeople to leave the country and move their wealth to a more tax friendly nation 3 Contents 1 In practice 1 1 Current examples 1 2 Historical examples 1 3 Proposed examples 1 4 USA 1 5 France 1 6 Germany 2 Concentration of wealth 2 1 France 3 Revenue 4 Effect on investment 4 1 Housing and consumer debt 5 Criticisms 5 1 Capital flight 5 2 Valuation issues 5 3 Social effects 6 Past repeals 7 Legal impediments 7 1 United States 7 2 Germany 8 See also 9 References 10 Further readingIn practice EditSome jurisdictions clarification needed require declaration of the taxpayer s balance sheet assets and liabilities and from that ask for a tax on net worth assets minus liabilities as a percentage of the net worth or a percentage of the net worth exceeding a certain level Wealth taxes can be limited to natural persons or they can be extended to also cover legal persons such as corporations 4 In 1990 about a dozen European countries had a wealth tax but by 2019 all but three had eliminated the tax because of the difficulties and costs associated with both design and enforcement 5 6 Belgium Norway Spain and Switzerland are the countries that raised revenue from net wealth taxes on individuals in 2019 with net wealth taxes accounting for 1 1 of overall tax revenues in Norway 0 55 in Spain and 3 6 in Switzerland for 2017 6 According to an OECD study on wealth taxes it is difficult to firmly argue that wealth taxes would have negative effects on entrepreneurship The magnitude of the effects of wealth taxes on entrepreneurship is also unclear 7 A 2022 study found that wealth taxes are most likely to be implemented in the aftermath of major economic recessions 8 Current examples Edit Argentina It is named Impuesto sobre los Bienes Personales For assets held within Argentina the tax is progressive from 0 50 on assets above ARS 3 000 000 approx US 32 000 at April 2021 official exchange rate to 1 25 on assets above ARS 18 000 000 approx US 193 000 at April 2021 official exchange rate 9 For assets held outside of Argentina the tax is progressive from 0 70 on assets above ARS 3 000 000 to 2 25 on assets above ARS 18 000 000 10 Colombia On January 1 2019 the Senate passed a tax reform bill that includes a lower corporate tax rate a new tax rate for financial corporations and a new wealth tax For the years 2019 2020 and 2021 the new wealth equity tax has been set at 1 for Colombian resident individuals worldwide net worth and 1 for non resident individuals on Colombian properties only such as real estate yachts artwork vessels ships and other assets with a net equity of at least COP5 billion US 1 5 million Shares in Colombian firms accounts receivable from Colombian debtors some portfolio assets and financial lease agreements are all exempt from the tax 11 Following the COVID 19 pandemic the richest Colombians will face higher taxes on wages dividends and properties as well as a one time solidarity levy on high incomes All of which is part of a new bill that was sent to congress in April 2021 The bill aims to collect about 25 trillion pesos US 6 9 billion a year through new taxes and budget restraints equating to 2 2 percent of GDP 12 France Until 2017 there was a solidarity tax on wealth on any net assets above 800 000 for those with total net worth of 1 300 000 or more Marginal rates ranged from 0 5 to 1 5 13 In 2007 it collected 4 07 billion accounting for 1 4 of total revenue 14 From 2018 onwards it has been replaced by a wealth tax on real estate exonerating all financial assets 15 Spain There is a tax called Patrimonio The tax rate is progressive from 0 2 to 3 75 of net assets above the threshold of 700 000 after 300 000 primary residence allowance 16 The exact amount varies between regions Netherlands There is a tax called vermogensrendementheffing Although its name wealth yield tax suggests that it is a tax on the yield of wealth it qualifies as a wealth tax since the actual yield whether positive or negative is not taken into account in its calculation Up to and including 2016 the rate was fixed at 1 2 30 taxation over an assumed yield of 4 From the fiscal year of 2017 onwards the tax rate progresses with wealth See Income tax in the Netherlands In addition to the vermogensrendementheffing owners of real estate pay a tax called onroerendezaakbelasting which is based on the estimated value of the real estate they own This is a local tax levied by the city council where the property is located Norway 0 7 municipal and 0 15 national a total of 0 85 levied on net assets exceeding 1 500 000 kr approx US 170 000 as of 2019 17 For tax purposes the value of the primary residence is valued to 25 of the market value secondary residences to 90 of the market value while working capital such as commercial real estate stocks and stock funds are valued at various percentages 18 The Conservative Party Progress Party and the Liberal Party have stated that they aim to reduce and eventually eliminate the wealth tax 19 Switzerland A progressive wealth tax that varies by residence location Most cantons have no wealth tax for individual net worth less than SFr 100000 approx US 100 000 and progressively raise the tax rate on net assets with a top rate ranging from 0 13 to 0 94 depending on canton and municipality of residence 20 Wealth tax is levied against worldwide assets of Swiss residents but it is not levied against assets in Switzerland held by non residents 20 21 Italy Two wealth taxes are imposed One IVIE is a 0 76 tax imposed on real assets held outside Italy The values of such assets are determined by purchase price or current market value Property taxes paid in the country where the real estate exists can offset IVIE Another tax IVAFE is 0 20 and is levied on all financial assets located outside the country including so far as the language seems to imply individual pension schemes such as 401 k s and IRAs in the US 22 Belgium The Act of 7 February 2018 which is effectively a wealth tax imposes a 0 15 annual tax on financial instruments kept in securities accounts worth more than 500 000 23 Historical examples Edit Ancient Athens had a wealth tax called eisphora see symmoria and a wealth registry consisting of self assessments timhma limited to the wealthiest The registry was not very accurate 24 p 159 Iceland had a wealth tax until 2006 and a temporary wealth tax reintroduced in 2010 for four years The tax was levied at a rate of 1 5 on net assets exceeding 75 000 000 kr for individuals and 100 000 000 kr for married couples citation needed Similar to Iceland Denmark taxed household income above a certain exemption threshold which was about the 98th percentile of the wealth distribution until 1997 A dozen OECD countries imposed similar taxes until the 1990s but the Danish wealth tax was the highest of its kind Until the late 1980s the marginal tax rate on wealth was 2 2 percent leading to a very high rate on the return on wealth After minimizing the tax for some years the Danish government eventually abolished the tax altogether in 1997 25 Some other European countries have discontinued this kind of tax in recent years Germany 1997 Finland 2006 Luxembourg 2006 and Sweden 2007 26 In the United Kingdom and other countries property real estate is often a person s main asset and has been taxed for example the window tax of 1696 the rates to some extent the Council Tax Proposed examples Edit USA EditSenators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders included a billionaire wealth tax in their campaign platforms during the 2020 United States Presidential Election A February 2020 poll found 67 of registered American voters supported a wealth tax on billionaires with support at 85 of Democrats 66 of independent voters and 47 of Republicans 27 While commentators have raised concerns The reality is that in order to actually raise the amount of money progressives like Warren and Sanders want to spend they d almost certainly need to tax a much larger base the working rich They re some of the wiliest folks around ready to move money overseas or engage in tricky tactics to avoid the prying hands of the federal government if incentivized to do so Many countries that have implemented wealth taxes have later reversed those decisions due to capital flight and impracticalities of enforcement including Austria France Sweden and the Netherlands Every time Warren talks about her paid for wish list proposals she s talking about taxing the working rich The reason why it never happens though is because it would be political suicide to tax such a key constituency 28 France Edit In France the left candidate at the presidential election of 2022 Jean Luc Melenchon proposed to tax the wealth income as the labour income Also he wanted to increase inheritance tax on the highest estates by accounting for all gifts and inheritances received throughout life and create a maximum inheritance of 12 million euros i e 100 times the median net wealth 29 Germany Edit In order to bridge the wealth gap between rich and poor in Germany the Social Democratic Party of Germany called for a nationwide wealth tax to be reintroduced in 2019 30 According to the proposed tax reform wealthy households would be required to pay an extra tax between 1 and 1 5 A single household would need to pay 1 of their net worth on every euro surpassing 2 Million and married couple would have to pay for every euro surpassing 4 Million A married household with a combined net worth of 4 2 Million would have to pay an annual wealth tax of 2 000 31 The proposition was eventually vetoed by the CDU CSU and therefore never again considered 32 Concentration of wealth EditMain article Wealth concentration In 2014 French economist Thomas Piketty published a widely discussed failed verification opinion book entitled Capital in the Twenty First Century that starts with the observation that economic inequality is increasing and proposes wealth taxes as a countermeasure The central thesis of the book is that inequality is not an accident but rather a feature of capitalism and can only be reversed through state interventionism The book thus argues that unless capitalism is reformed the very democratic order will be threatened At the core of this thesis is the notion that when the rate of return on capital r is greater than the rate of economic growth g over the long term the result is the concentration of wealth and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability Piketty proposes a global system of progressive wealth taxes to help reduce inequality and avoid the trend towards a vast majority of wealth coming under the control of a tiny minority This analysis was hailed as a major and important work by some economists 33 Other economists have challenged Piketty s proposals and interpretations 34 35 36 37 38 39 excessive citations France Edit In 2017 when introducing the fiscal reform of the solidarity wealth tax the government of the French president Emmanuel Macron used the first argument of capital flight The other argument stated by the comity of evaluation of reforms on wealth fiscalism was that the previous wealth tax was not enough progressive for the top 0 1 wealthier The IFI as the ISF are wealth tax thus they concerned high earners A big part of people paying this tax are in the ninth decile of income distribution and the IFI represents one over two household in the wealthiest 0 01 Therefore in the general tax system the IFI contributes as did the ISF to make the tax system more progressive But this progressivity has limits the IFI represents on average 0 1 of income around the ninth decile and 1 2 of income of 0 1 of very well off households in 2018 While the income tax rate under the ISF was stable overall within the top 0 1 of income the income tax rate under of the IFI declines for the wealthiest and falls to 0 6 for the top 0 01 40 Broadly this reform largely benefits to the 0 1 wealthier and did not make this wealth tax more progressive as it was supposed to be In fact it reduced the number of accountable people of wealth tax leaving the country but in term of investment the gains of this reforms has been traduced in an increasing of dividend on capital earnings 37 4 billion from non financial society had been paid and not on direct investment on corporate see Capital flight In average and from different studies those fiscal reforms benefited more to top wealthier households For Ben Jelloul and al 2019 the reforms benefit for the top 1 more wealthier household with 5 5 point of disposable revenue For Madec and al 2019 it had affected on the top 2 of the wealthier households and for Pasquier and Sicsic 2019 the 5 of the top distribution perceived 57 of the gain of the fiscal reform 41 Revenue EditRevenue from a wealth tax scheme depends largely on the presence of net wealth and wealth inequality within the target country Revenue depends on the plan that is in place but it generally can be modeled as R t w displaystyle R t times w where t represents the tax rate and w is the amount of wealth affected by that tax rate 42 Many plans include tax brackets where a certain portion of the individual s wealth will be taxed at a given rate and any wealth beyond that amount will be taxed at a different rate A small number of countries have been using wealth tax regimes for some time Revenues earned from wealth tax schemes vary by country from 0 98 of GDP in Switzerland to 0 22 in France for example 43 2020 United States presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren claimed a wealth tax plan could generate 1 4 of GDP in revenue for the United States 44 According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development OECD the revenues generated from wealth taxes account for about 0 46 of all tax revenue on average in 2018 for countries which have wealth tax schemes in place However this varies from country to country the highest would be that of Luxembourg where it accounted for 7 18 of total tax revenue in 2018 the lowest would be Germany where it accounted for 0 03 of total tax revenue in 2018 Wealth Tax Revenues by Country US dollars Billions in 2018 43 Country Recurrent Tax on Net Wealth Total Tax Revenue Wealth Tax over Total Tax RevenueLuxembourg 1 995 27 8 7 18 Switzerland 9 396 197 1 4 77 Norway 2 470 169 6 1 46 Spain 2 618 490 5 0 53 Belgium 1 123 238 4 0 47 Hungary 0 154 56 9 0 27 France 2 166 1280 1 0 17 Canada 0 335 564 8 0 06 Germany 0 471 1526 0 03 Estimates for a wealth tax s potential revenue in the United States vary Several Democratic presidential candidates in the 2020 election have proposed wealth tax plans Elizabeth Warren for example has proposed a wealth tax of 2 on net wealth above 50 million and 6 above 1 billion 45 The conservative leaning nonprofit Tax Foundation estimates revenue generated by Senator Warren s proposal would total around 2 6 trillion over the next 10 years 46 Separate estimates from campaign advisors and economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman put the revenue at about 1 of GDP per year in alignment with USD revenue estimates 44 42 These estimates put Senator Warren s tax plan revenues at about 200 billion in 2020 46 The sum of United States tax revenues in 2018 were 5 trillion in 2018 43 meaning the tax collected by this plan would be equal to 4 of current tax revenues Additionally the Tax Foundation estimates 2020 presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders wealth tax plan 47 would collect 3 2 trillion between 2020 and 2029 46 Previous proposals for a wealth tax in the United States had already existed Senator Huey Long of Louisiana proposed a wealth tax as part of his Share Our Wealth movement in 1934 48 Eileen Myles proposed a net assets tax in her presidential campaign in 1992 49 as did Donald Trump during his presidential campaign in 2000 50 A net wealth tax may also be designed to be revenue neutral if it is used to broaden the tax base stabilize the economy and reduce individual income and other taxes Effect on investment EditA wealth tax serves as a negative reinforcer use it or lose it which incentivizes the productive use of assets rather than letting assets accumulate without being used According to University of Pennsylvania Law School professors David Shakow and Reed Shuldiner a wealth tax also taxes capital that is not productively employed Thus a wealth tax can be viewed as a tax on potential income from capital 51 Net wealth taxes can complement rather than replace gift taxes capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes to increase administrability and the effectiveness of enforcement efforts In their article Investment Effects of Wealth Taxes Under Uncertainty and Irreversibility Rainer Niemann and Caren Sureth Sloane found that the effects of wealth taxation on investment mainly depends upon the tax method employed and the broadness of the wealth threshold for taxation 52 Niemann and Sureth Sloane found that Broadening the wealth tax base tends to accelerate investment during high interest rate periods Caren Sureth and Ralf Maiterth concluded that wealth tax revenues from entrepreneurs may decrease in the long term and the revenue from a wealth tax may be negative if the wealth taxation thresholds are too low 53 Saez and Zucman are two economists that worked on the Ultra Millionaire Tax proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren In their paper Progressive Wealth Taxation they assert that a potential wealth tax in the United States needs necessary parameters to limit detrimental effects on investment 54 One parameter is a high wealth threshold to limit direct taxation on small business and entrepreneurship The academic literature on the effects of wealth taxation on investment incentives are inconclusive in the United States Saez and Zucman assert there are three reasons wealth taxes in European countries are weak comparisons to the United States when analyzing potential effects on investment First they claim tax competition between European countries allows for individuals to avoid taxation by allocating assets to a different country Reallocating assets to avoid taxation is more difficult in the United States because tax filings apply equally to United States citizens no matter the country of current residence 55 Second low exemption thresholds caused liquidity problems for some individuals who were on the lower end of wealth taxation thresholds Third they contend European wealth taxes need modernization and improved methods for systematic information gathering Further proponents for a wealth tax claim it could have positive effects on investment in the United States Some extremely wealthy people use their assets in unproductive ways 56 For example an entrepreneur could generate much higher returns though could conversely lose much more capital operating on leverage than a wealthy individual with a conservative investment such as United States Treasury Bonds A wealth tax could lead to negative effects on investment saving and economic growth In the article Economic effects of wealth taxation Kyle Pomerleau states A wealth tax even levied at an apparently low annual rate places a significant burden on saving 57 The degree of this impact on savings and investments is reliant on the openness of the United States economy A wealth tax would shrink national saving and increase foreign ownership of assets The potential decrease in national savings leads to a decrease in capital stock An estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model indicates that if the revenue from the wealth tax proposed by Elizabeth Warren were used to finance non productive government spending GDP would decrease by 2 1 percent by 2050 capital stock would decrease by 6 5 percent and wages would decrease by 2 3 percent 58 Some opponents also point out that redistribution through a wealth tax is an inherently counterintuitive way to foster economic growth Richard Epstein a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution contents The classical liberal approach wants to simplify taxation and reduce regulation to spur growth Plain old growth is a much better social tonic that the toxic Warren Wealth Tax 59 Housing and consumer debt Edit Unlike property taxes that fall on the full value of a property a net wealth tax only taxes equity value above debt This could benefit those with mortgages student loans automobile loans consumer loans etc citation needed Criticisms EditThere are many arguments against the implementation of a wealth tax including claims that a wealth tax would be unconstitutional in the United States that property would be too hard to value and that wealth taxes would reduce the rate of innovation Capital flight Edit A 2006 article in The Washington Post titled Old Money New Money Flee France and Its Wealth Tax pointed out some of the harm caused by France s wealth tax The article gave examples of how the tax caused capital flight brain drain loss of jobs and ultimately a net loss in tax revenue Among other things the article stated Eric Pichet author of a French tax guide estimates the wealth tax earns the government about 2 6 billion a year but has cost the country more than 125 billion in capital flight since 1998 60 61 In fact the wealth tax named Impot sur les Grandes Fortunes IGF tax on great wealth had been created in 1980 then suppressed in 1986 before finally being reintroduced in 1988 under the name Impot de Solidarite sur la Fortune ISF solidarity tax on wealth In 1999 a new higher tax category was added which increased the money collected from 0 09 of GDP in 1990 to 0 16 in 2004 For example in 2003 370 ISF s accountables people left France and it continued to grow year by year except between 2010 and 2011 when the tax threshold has been raised and accountable people were discarded from it This capital flight only decrease after 2015 and in 2017 when the French government announced that it will suppress this tax After the reforms implementation there were only 163 departures of wealth tax people in 2018 62 The capital flight was one of the argument to reforms the wealth tax After 2017 in the financial law of 2018 the new wealth tax was introduced with other tax reforms The fiscal reform thus included a unique forfeit tax on saving combined with the replacement of ISF by the IFI Impot sur la Fortune Immobiliere IFI which reduce the wealth tax to real estate propriety only and finally a decrease of the corporate tax This argument of capital flight takes its roots on an economic theory the runoff theory By decreasing the wealth tax the wealth households are supposed to come back inside the country to invest and thus raised the GDP growth which will have effect on all the population by reducing unemployment and boost the economy In France the fiscal reform did not have the expected effects of runoff In fact the capital flight due to wealth tax household leaving only represented 0 3 and 0 5 of the total amount of money collected by the solidarity tax on wealth between 2004 and 2015 On the other hand this decrease of the wealth tax represented an income loss of 2 9 billion for the state 63 In term of investment there were fewer investments in real estate from people accountable of wealth tax However this movement could be explained more by the increase in household income the low level of interest rates on mortgage loans and the general dynamics of the real estate market than by a sale on the part of wealthy households of property subject to the IFI for the benefit of investments in transferable securities therefore the result in investment on corporate are not significant Moreover the fiscal reform on wealth tax had an insignificant level at the macroeconomic level for the corporate funds For example in 2020 for the non financial society the part of listed and non listed share has been lower from the average of the previous period 2001 2019 It is also hard to measure the effect on corporate investment because of the Covid 19 crises which caused a shut down of the economy in 2020 64 Valuation issues Edit In 2012 the Wall Street Journal wrote that the wealth tax has a fatal flaw valuation It has been estimated that 62 of the wealth of the top 1 is non financial i e vehicles real estate and most importantly private business Private businesses account for nearly 40 of their wealth and are the largest single category A particular issue for small business owners is that they cannot accurately value their private business until it is sold Furthermore business owners could easily make their businesses look much less valuable than they really are through accounting valuations and assumptions about the future Even the rich don t know exactly what they re worth in any given moment 65 Examples of such fraud and malfeasance were revealed in 2013 when French budget minister Jerome Cahuzac was discovered shifting financial assets into Swiss bank accounts in order to avoid the wealth tax After further investigation a French finance ministry official said A number of government officials minimised their wealth by negligence or with intent but without exceeding 5 10 per cent of their real worth however there are some who have deliberately tried to deceive the authorities 66 Yet again in October 2014 France s Finance chairman and President of the National Assembly Gilles Carrez was found to have avoided paying the French wealth tax ISF for three years by applying a 30 percent tax allowance on one of his homes However he had previously converted the home into an SCI a private limited company to be used for rental purposes The 30 percent allowance does not apply to SCI holdings Once this was revealed Carrez declared if the tax authorities think that I should pay the wealth tax I won t argue Carrez is one of more than 60 French parliamentarians battling with the tax offices over dodgy asset declarations 67 Moreover this problem of wealth devaluation is undermined by the administration itself For example in France in 1999 the government introduced the notion of the measured application of the tax law 68 But this application of the law is mostly reserved for the self declared tax like the wealth tax Its mean that if there is a fraud in the declaration there will be no sanction if the household concerned correct his mistake even if it might have been done in purpose This flexibility granted to self declared taxes is indeed unequal In fact the other tax that concerned most of the households like income taxes can t be self declared and this fraud flexibility benefits only to the richer household More broadly this self declaration tax has developed what the sociologist Alexis Spire called tax law domestication which enable richest part of the population to employed fiscal specialist to optimize their declaration and minimize the amount of the wealth tax Once again those opportunity of optimization as the flexibility in sanctions are unequally distributed in the tax spectrum and thus in the different part of the population Social effects Edit Opponents of wealth taxes have argued that there is an undercurrent of envy in the campaign against extremes of wealth 69 Two Yale University London School of Economics studies 2006 2008 on relative income yielded results asserting that 50 percent of the public would prefer to earn less money as long as they earned as much or more than their neighbor 70 71 Many analysts and scholars who assert that since wealth taxes are a form of direct asset collection as well as double taxation they are antithetical to personal freedom and individual liberty They further contend that free nations should have no business helping themselves arbitrarily to the personal belongings of any group of its citizens 72 Further these opponents may say wealth taxes place the authority of the government ahead of the rights of the individual and ultimately undermine the concept of personal sovereignty The Daily Telegraph editor Allister Heath critically described wealth taxes as Marxian in concept and ethically destructive to the values of democracies Taxing already acquired property drastically alters the relationship between citizen and state we become leaseholders rather than freeholders with accumulated taxes over long periods of time eventually returning our wealth to the state It breaches a key principle that has made this country great the gradual expansion of property ownership and the democratisation of wealth 73 Past repeals EditIn 2004 a study by the Institut de l enterprise investigated why several European countries were eliminating wealth taxes and made the following observations 1 Wealth taxes contributed to capital drain promoting the flight of capital as well as discouraging investors from coming in 2 Wealth taxes had high management cost and relatively low returns 3 Wealth taxes distorted resource allocation particularly involving certain exemptions and unequal valuation of assets In its summary the institute found that the wealth taxes were not as equitable as they appeared 74 In a 2011 study the London School of Economics examined wealth taxes that were being considered by the Labour party in the United Kingdom between 1974 and 1976 but were ultimately abandoned The findings of the study revealed that the British evaluated similar programs in other countries and determined that the Spanish wealth tax may have contributed to a banking crisis and the French wealth tax had been undergoing review by its government for being unpopular and overly complex As efforts progressed concerns were developing over the practicality and implementation of wealth taxes as well as worry that they would undermine confidence in the British economy Eventually plans were dropped Former British Chancellor Denis Healey concluded that attempting to implement wealth taxes was a mistake We had committed ourselves to a Wealth Tax but in five years I found it impossible to draft one which would yield enough revenue to be worth the administrative cost and political hassle The conclusion of the study stated that there were lingering questions such as the impacts on personal saving and small business investment consequences of capital flight complexity of implementation and ability to raise predicted revenues that must be adequately addressed before further consideration of wealth taxes 75 Legal impediments EditUnited States Edit See also Pollock v Farmers Loan amp Trust Co Sixteenth Amendment to the United States ConstitutionIn part because a wealth tax has never been implemented in the United States there is no legal consensus about its constitutionality As evidenced below much scholarly debate on the topic hinges on whether or not such a tax is understood to be a direct tax per Article 1 Section 9 of the Constitution which requires that the burden of direct taxes be apportioned across the states by their population Barry L Isaacs interprets current case law in the United States to hold that a wealth tax is a direct tax under Article 1 Section 9 76 77 Given the extreme difficulty of apportioning a wealth tax by state population the implementation of a wealth tax in the United States would require either a constitutional amendment or the overturning of current case law 78 Unlike federal wealth taxes states and localities are not bound by Article 1 Section 9 which is why they are able to levy taxes on real estate 79 Other legal scholars have argued that a wealth tax does not represent a direct tax and that such a tax could be implemented in the United States without a constitutional amendment In a lengthy essay from 2018 authors in the Indiana Journal of Law argued that the belief that the U S Constitution effectively makes a national wealth tax impossible is wrong 80 112 The authors noted that in the 1796 Supreme Court decision for Hylton v United States Supreme Court justices who had personally taken part in the creation of the U S Constitution unanimously rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of an annual tax on carriages a tax akin to a national wealth tax in that it taxed a luxury property 80 114 However Alexander Hamilton who supported the carriage tax told the Supreme Court that it was constitutional because it was an excise tax not a direct tax Hamilton s brief defines direct taxes as Capitation or poll taxes taxes on lands and buildings general assessments whether on the whole property of individuals or on their whole real or personal estate which would include the wealth tax 81 Tax scholars have repeatedly noted that the critical difference between income taxes and wealth taxes the realization requirement is a matter of administrative convenience not a constitutional requirement citation needed To prevent capital flight proponents of wealth taxes have argued for the implementation of a one time exit tax on high net worth individuals who renounce their citizenship and leave the country 82 An additional constitutional objection to such a tax could be raised on the grounds that it violates the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment which prohibits the federal government from taking private property for public use without just compensation 83 Germany Edit The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in Karlsruhe found that wealth taxes would need to be confiscatory in order to bring about any real redistribution In addition the court held that the sum of wealth tax and income tax should not be greater than half of a taxpayer s income The tax thus gives rise to a dilemma either it is ineffective in fighting inequalities or it is confiscatory and it is for that reason that the Germans chose to eliminate it Thus finding such wealth taxes unconstitutional in 1995 84 In 2006 the Constitutional Court revised this decision on the so called Halbteilungsgrundsatz stating that From the property guarantee of the Basic Law no generally binding absolute upper limit of taxation in the vicinity of a half division can be derived 85 See also EditAd valorem tax Capital in the Twenty First Century Capital levy a one off wealth tax Economic inequality Environment addressing human overpopulation having similar effects to decrease wealth gap Endowment tax Inheritance tax Land value tax Panama Papers Paradise Papers Progressive tax Property tax Redistribution of income and wealth Tax exporting Wealth concentration Wealth inequality in the United States Welfare state World taxation system ZakatReferences Edit a b Edward N Wolff Time for a Wealth Tax Boston Review Feb Mar 1996 recommending a net wealth tax for the US of 0 05 for the first 100 000 in assets to 0 3 for assets over 1 000 000 Global Revenue Statistics Database a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Pichet Eric June 17 2011 The Economic Consequences of the French Wealth Tax SSRN 1268381 Taxation of Wealth See Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV Is Incorporation Really Better Than Central Management and Control for Testing Corporate Residency An Answer to Corporate Tax Evasion and Inversion 43 Ohio N U L Rev 359 2017 Andelman David A A wealth tax is a bad idea www cnn com CNN Retrieved December 3 2021 a b Zeballos Roig Joseph 4 European countries still have a wealth tax Here s how much success they ve each had Business Insider Retrieved April 22 2021 The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD OECD Tax Policy Studies OECD 26 114 Limberg Julian Seelkopf Laura 2022 The historical origins of wealth taxation Journal of European Public Policy 29 5 670 688 doi 10 1080 13501763 2021 1992486 ISSN 1350 1763 S2CID 245307172 Bienes Personales for Assets within Argentina Administracion Federal de Ingresos Publicos April 27 2021 Retrieved April 27 2021 Bienes Personales for Assets outside of Argentina Administracion Federal de Ingresos Publicos April 27 2021 Retrieved April 27 2021 Colombia s new tax bill comes into effect www internationalinvestment net January 31 2019 Retrieved April 22 2021 Colombia to Tax Rich After Pandemic Leaves Debt Mass Hunger Bloomberg com April 15 2021 Retrieved April 22 2021 Worldwide personal tax guide 2013 2014 France PDF HSBC July 1 2013 Retrieved December 11 2014 French wealth tax explained in full in The Connexion There has never been a better time to invest in France Financial Times May 17 2018 Retrieved August 9 2018 Tramos en el Impuesto sobre el Patrimonio tipo impositivo Rankia May 13 2014 Skatteetaten Skatteetaten Wealth tax www skatteetaten no Retrieved December 1 2019 Skatteetaten Skatteetaten Taxes www skatteetaten no Retrieved September 14 2021 NTB February 13 2014 Politisk flertall for a fjerne formuesskatten in Norwegian Dagens Naeringsliv Retrieved March 19 2014 a b Switzerland Wealth Tax Lowtax net Worldwide personal tax guide 2012 2013 PDF HSBC 1 agenziaentrate gov it What the Belgian Wealth Tax means for you The Fry Group June 21 2018 Retrieved April 22 2021 Christ Matthew R 1990 Liturgy Avoidance and Antidosis in Classical Athens Transactions of the American Philological Association 120 147 169 doi 10 2307 283983 JSTOR 283983 Jakobsen Katrine Jakobsen Kristian Kleven Henrik Zucman Gabriel 2019 Wealth Taxation and Wealth Accumulation Theory and Evidence From Denmark The Quarterly Journal of Economics 135 1 328 388 doi 10 1093 qje qjz032 Sweden axes wealth tax www ft com Retrieved March 28 2007 Gabriela Schulte February 26 2020 Poll Two thirds of voters say billionaires should pay a wealth tax Wolfe Liz April 5 2022 Elizabeth Warren s Wealth Tax Would Hurt More Than Just the Tippy Top reason com Reason Retrieved April 6 2022 l AEC fr Chapitre 50 Partage des richesses faire la revolution fiscale https laec fr section 50 faire la revolution fiscale Welle www dw com Deutsche Can a wealth tax bridge Germany s divide between rich and poor DW 27 08 2019 DW COM Retrieved April 22 2021 Zeitung Suddeutsche SPD will Vermogensteuer wieder einfuhren Suddeutsche de in German Retrieved April 22 2021 ZEIT ONLINE Lesen Sie zeit de mit Werbung oder im PUR Abo Sie haben die Wahl www zeit de Retrieved April 22 2021 Massive new data set suggests inequality is about to get even worse The Washington Post 2018 Piketty s theory about the increase in the return of capital in relation to labor is patently wrong as anyone who has witnessed the rise of what is called the knowledge economy or anyone who has had investments in general knows Nassim Nicholas Taleb Skin in the Game 2018 Random House Thomas Piketty Is Wrong America Will Never Look Like a Jane Austen Novel New Republic 2014 Thomas Piketty s Wealth Illusion Barrons August 5 2014 What Piketty Gets Wrong About Capitalism Reason May 23 2014 Thomas Piketty s Wrong Conclusions on Rising U S Income Inequality U S News amp World Report June 5 2014 Inequality a Piketty Problem The Economist May 24 2014 DHERBECOURT Clement LOPEZ FORERO Margarita Quelle taxation du capital avant et apres la reforme de 2018 La note d analyse 2019 4 n 81 p 1 11 DOI 10 3917 lna 081 0001 URL https www cairn info revue la note d analyse 2019 4 page 1 htm COMITE D EVALUATION DES REFORMES DE LA FISCALITE DU CAPITAL Premier rapport 10 2019 p 209 URL https www strategie gouv fr sites strategie gouv fr files atoms files fs 2019 fiscalite capital 01 10 2019 pdf a b Saez Zucman September 4 2019 Progressive Wealth Taxation PDF Brookings a b c OECD 2020 Revenue Statistics Comparative tables OECD Tax Statistics database https doi org 10 1787 data 00262 en accessed on 17 February 2020 a b Saez and Zucman Letter to Elizabeth Warren PDF Ultra Millionaire Tax Elizabeth Warren a b c A Wealth Tax Would Increase Foreign Ownership of U S Capital Tax Foundation January 27 2020 Retrieved March 12 2020 Tax on Extreme Wealth Bernie Sanders Huey Long s Programs Share Our Wealth Share the Wealth Long Legacy Project Retrieved July 28 2020 Rothkopf Joanna January 20 2016 A Look Back at Eileen Myles Revolutionary Openly Female Write In Presidential Campaign Jezebel Retrieved October 28 2018 Trump proposes massive one time tax on the rich November 9 1999 cnn com Retrieved January 8 2017 Shakow David and Shuldiner Reed Symposium on Wealth Taxes Part II New York University School of Law Tax Law Review 53 Tax L Rev 499 506 Summer 2000 Niemann Rainer 2015 Investment Effects of Wealth Taxes Under Uncertainty and Irreversibility PDF International Taxation Research Paper doi 10 2139 ssrn 2685104 S2CID 386291 Sureth Sloane Caren 2005 Wealth Tax as Alternative Minimum Tax doi 10 2139 ssrn 700297 hdl 10419 27034 S2CID 28648794 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Saez Emmanuel Zucman Gabriel Progressive Wealth Taxation PDF a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help How to Pay Taxes When You are Overseas Investopedia Proponents of Wealth Taxation Must Consider its Effects on Innovation Tax Foundation November 12 2019 Pomerleau Kyle Economic Effects of Wealth Taxation AEI Senator Elizabeth Warren s Wealth Tax Budgetary and Economic Effects Penn Wharton University of Pennsylvania Budget Model Epstein Richard The Toxic Warren Wealth Tax The Hoover Institution Washington Post Old Money New Money Flee France and Its Wealth Tax July 16 2006 Pichet Eric September 15 2008 The Economic Consequences of the French Wealth Tax SSRN 1268381 via papers ssrn com COMITE D EVALUATION DES REFORMES DE LA FISCALITE DU CAPITAL Premier rapport 01 10 2019 p 203 206 URL https www strategie gouv fr sites strategie gouv fr files atoms files fs 2019 fiscalite capital 01 10 2019 pdf Vie publique Reformes de la fiscalite du capital objectif atteint 14 10 2020 https www vie publique fr en bref 276640 fiscalite du capital et attractivite economique objectif atteint Comite d evaluation des reformes de la fiscalite du capital Deuxieme rapport 10 2020 URL 276598 pdf vie publique fr The Problem with a Wealth tax Wall Street Journal January 11 2012 Chazan David October 22 2014 French MPs face investigation over tax scandal The Telegraph France Medias Monde France s Finance Chairman facing tax nightmare RFI News National French Radio SPIRE Alexis Fraude fiscale une regulation a deux vitesses Revue Projet 2014 4 N 341 p 23 30 DOI 10 3917 pro 341 0023 URL https www cairn info revue projet 2014 4 page 23 htm An Immodest Proposal A Global Tax on the Super Rich Businessweek October 23 2013 Does Envy Destroy Social Fundamentals The Impact of Relative Income Position on Social Capital 2006 Social Capital and Relative Income Concerns Evidence from 26 Countries 2008 Umfairteilung Economist September 8 2012 A wealth tax would be ethically wrong and economically destructive www telegraph co uk Wealth Tax in Europe Why The Decline Institut de l enterprise June 2004 Why was a wealth tax for the UK abandoned Lessons for the policy process and tackling wealth inequality London School of Economics 2011 Isaacs Barry L 1977 78 Do We Want a Wealth Tax in America 32 U Miami L Rev 23 See for example the United States Supreme Court case of Fernandez v Wiener in which the Court stated that a direct tax is a tax which falls upon the owner merely because he is owner regardless of his use or disposition of the property Fernandez v Wiener 326 U S 340 66 S Ct 178 45 2 U S Tax Cas CCH 10 239 1945 Jensen Erik M 2004 Interpreting the Sixteenth Amendment By Way of the Direct Tax Clauses 21 Const Comment 355 Yglesias Matthew March 6 2013 America Does Tax Wealth Just Not Very Intelligently Slate Retrieved March 18 2013 a b Johnsen Dawn Dellinger Walter January 1 2018 The Constitutionality of a National Wealth Tax 93 Indiana Law Journal 111 2018 93 1 ISSN 0019 6665 Feldman Noah January 30 2019 Wealth Tax s Legality Depends on What Direct Means Bloomberg News Homan Timothy R October 18 2019 Warren s surge brings new scrutiny to signature wealth tax The Hill Retrieved October 20 2019 Griffith Joel April 30 2019 Elizabeth Warren s Wealth Tax Has Three Strikes Against It Here s Why Heritage Foundation Economist Umfairteilung Economist September 8 2012 Der Spiegel Staat darf uber 50 Prozent Steuern kassieren March 16 2006Further reading EditAlexandra Thornton and Galen Hendricks Ending Special Tax Treatment for the Very Wealthy Center for American Progress 4 June 2019 Ending Special Tax Treatment for the Very Wealthy The report summarizes the problem gross inequality and its cause special tax treatment for the extremely rich and specific ways to rebalance the tax code and put the economy on a better track Scheuer Florian Slemrod Joel August 2 2020 Taxation and the Superrich Annual Review of Economics 12 1 189 211 Scheuer Florian Slemrod Joel 2021 Taxing Our Wealth Journal of Economic Perspectives Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Wealth tax amp oldid 1144461439, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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