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Originally Posted by Actor
That just might be a good idea. The federal government taxes wealth and distributes it to the states.
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I think you missed the issue. This is not about distributing the tax revenues, it is about distributing the tax burden proportionally among the states on the basis of population.
California currently has about 12% of the nation's population. That means that 12% of the total revenue raised by this tax would have to come from California. That potentially means a different rate in every state for the wealth tax, depending on the state's proportional share of the tax burden and the number of tax payers in that state who would qualify as having to pay the tax.
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Without an unlikely constitutional amendment, this is what would happen. Because a direct tax must be “apportioned among the several States” according to “the Census or Enumeration herein”, the total revenue of the tax would have to be decided beforehand by the government, and then apportioned to each state by population, not by any wealth-related measure. So if a state contains 10 percent of the national population, it will pay 10 percent of the tax, regardless of wealth.
Wealthy people will be able to move their assets to new locations where, thanks to the clustering of others like themselves, they will individually pay far less than they would have in poorer states. In the poor states they leave behind, the threshold at which the tax kicks in will inevitably have to be lowered, creating a brand new class of equality problems.
...because it is impossible without a constitutional amendment, which Senator Warren is likely aware of, its presence in her platform is a conscious lie of a campaign promise. It is entirely possible that the senator could push for a constitutional amendment. But even leaving aside the unlikelihood of a successful amendment, the time horizon means that, as a campaign idea, it is disingenuous.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...onstitutional/
