General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Does Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax" proposal make her more electable or less electable? [View all]unblock
(52,196 posts)the federal government could tax the states, or tax individuals directly, but it has to be based on the population.
so they could tax everyone $100 every year.
or they could make each state pay the federal government $100 per person in their state, and let each state worry about how to pay for that (of course, most *states* can impose wealth taxes).
yes, this is why the 16th amendment was needed to make an income tax constitutional.
the only arguments i've seen about how a "wealth tax" could be constitutional all are actually not supporting true wealth taxes, but are actually trying to argue for the constitutionality of modifications to the income tax based on wealth. i'll allow that there might be some hybrid approach that is constitutional, but it would have drawbacks due to being a rather imperfect wealth tax.