Wealth Taxes Don’t Work. Here’s Why.

Ted

FYI: Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. To which his contemporary, Ernest Hemingway, would retort years later, “Yes, they have more money.”

This difference these days is referred to as inequality, which of course figures prominently in today’s politics. This week’s Democratic debate displayed that in spades, with potential presidential candidates proffering measures to narrow the difference between Fitzgerald’s very rich and presumably just about everybody else who watched the proceedings.

Prominent among these suggestions was a wealth tax, proposed by the two leading lights of the left, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat, would levy a 2% tax on a household’s wealth that exceeds $50 million, and 3% on the amount above $1 billion. The Vermont independent’s plan would start at 1% on a household’s wealth over $32 million and increase to 8% on assets above $10 billion.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-real-problem-with-wealth-taxes-51571413910?mod=hp_LEAD_3

msf

On the one hand, the article bemoans the difficulty in assessing wealth. On the other hand, it then puts forth the estate tax, which entails assessing wealth, as a viable "other way".