The Washington Post has made available for download their article, “A Wealth Tax Is A Good Idea — If We Had A Different Supreme Court,” which discusses the fate that Biden’s “billionaire tax” would face if it encountered the current Supreme Court. The article begins as follows:
Senate Democrats and the Biden administration are reportedly nearing a deal on a new “billionaire tax” to pay for the package of spending programs that is stalled in Congress. The tax — which would apply annually to the increase in the value of stocks and other assets held by taxpayers with a net worth of $1 billion or more — appears to be one of the few revenue-raising measures that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), a key swing vote, is willing to countenance. But there is a potentially fatal flaw in the proposal that should cause progressives to view it as a Trojan horse: The current Supreme Court is quite likely to strike it down as unconstitutional.
To be sure, the constitutional case against the proposed billionaire tax isn’t open and shut. If I were on the Supreme Court, I would say that the tax is constitutional and ought to be upheld. But I’m not on the Supreme Court — and six conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents are. Faced with a genuinely unresolved legal question for which there are plausible arguments on both sides, those justices would not have a hard time saying that the billionaire tax flunks the constitutional test.
To see the full article, click: A Wealth Tax Is A Good Idea — If We Had A Different Supreme Court
Posted by Bennett Mansour, Associate Editor, Wealth Strategies Journal
Wealth Strategies Journal 