Well, the bad and losing ideas of the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries are making a comeback and we can’t get rid of them. The newest returnee? The wealth tax. The long and short here? The idea is you’d tax the actual wealth and estate values of rich people instead of just their income.

It seems overwhelmingly likely that the current Supreme Court would invalidate a wealth tax under the Fifth Amendment. If somehow they didn’t, the issue with the tax is fairly simple. How does you deal with illiquid billionaires vs. liquid billionaires? What happens if you have billionaires selling off stocks and assets in a rush to have the cash for the tax? There’s a ton that can go wrong- assuming it ever even clears the courts.

There’s a better way that makes sense and would probably build more public support. Create more brackets, make them lower, and eliminate or dramatically cut write-offs. If someone proposed making people who earn over a million dollars *actually* pay 25%, rather than claim every write-off known to man and pay nothing, the public would probably support it. Maybe you don’t like the 25% number, fine, pick your number. If your complaint is that rich people don’t pay, take away the write-offs and shield regular people from the hits under lower rates like 5 or 10%.

It’s true that increasing wealth concentration under the ultra wealthy is a real problem. Sure, you can do a windfall tax, and that probably is good at some high number, but that number is not a million dollars in 2026. Everyone would be better off with a legitimately simple, straight forward graduated income tax with simple brackets that are lower. Collect more revenue and make things simple. Only conservative ideologically crazy people would complain. That would be actually a good thing.