General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Does Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax" proposal make her more electable or less electable? [View all]unblock
(51,973 posts)but it seems pretty obviously unconstitutional, at least as simplistically stated. other than the income tax, made ok by the 16th amendment, taxes generally have to be apportioned per capita, which a wealth tax clearly would not be.
now, a more subtle approach would be not to actually tax wealth directly, but to modify the income tax based on wealth. there are many ways one could imagine doing this, and there's more of an argument that at least some of these might pass constitutional muster.
but these wouldn't be true wealth taxes, this would only shift the income tax in the direction of hitting wealthier people more.
an example might be to completely disallow all mortgage interest deductions for anyone who owns more than one home. it's not clear to me that even that is constitutional, but certainly there's a much better case for it. however, it doesn't necessarily get at what i, at least, think of when i think of a "wealth tax". it would affect some more middle-class people (say, who moved into a smaller house and are renting out their old house) while leaving some super-rich people unaffected (they can simply avoid owning multiple homes).