Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has an
early priority as she begins her new
role on the Senate Finance
Committee.
“My first order of business on the
@SenateFinance Committee—the committee that leads tax and
revenue policy in the Senate—will be to introduce legislation for a
#WealthTax on fortunes above $50 million,” she tweeted earlier this month. As she told MSNBC’s Joy
Reid, that would amount to a two-cent tax on the top 0.1 percent of
wealth-holders.
Critics contend, as they did during
the 2020 presidential primaries, that such a wealth tax is
unconstitutional because of the “apportionment rule,” an integral
component of the three-fifths
compromise over
slavery.
Those critics are
wrong.
As Ari
Glogower,
David
Gamage, and
Roosevelt Fellow Kitty
Richards explain
in a new issue brief, the apportionment rule—which requires certain
taxes to be apportioned among states according to their
populations—does not curtail Congress’s broad power to enact a wealth
tax, whether apportioned or not.
Regardless of Supreme Court
justices’ personal preferences or motives, constitutional provisions
and case law confirm: A
wealth tax is constitutional.
It’s also an economic necessity, as
Roosevelt Program Manager Emily DiVito writes for the blog.
“Taxing income at higher rates and
with fewer loopholes is important, but it doesn’t touch the wealth the
very top has already amassed, and it doesn’t fairly measure a person’s
or family’s true economic status or ability to pay their fair
share.”
A wealth tax, she argues, would be
fair, just, targeted, and effective. Learn
why.
