This draft report consists of revenue, economic, and constitutional analysis of the California Extreme Wealth Tax.A revised and updated version of this report is available here: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3924524

This essay argues that, if the federal government fails to act sufficiently regarding the COVID-19 budget crisis, states should consider either real property surtaxes on their wealthiest residents or partial deemed realization of the unrealized capital gains of the very wealthy

As the Great Recession dramatically illustrated, state and local governments need a more stable revenue source. Accordingly, states and localities as diverse as Texas and San Francisco, are experimenting with new kinds of taxes. However, there has been essentially no experimentation with the...

A well-designed, high-end wealth tax can level the playing field in an unequal society and promote shared economic prosperity. Critics have argued, however, that a wealth tax would be unconstitutional because of the Constitution’s apportionment rule, which requires certain taxes to be...

The Constitution requires that “direct taxes” be “apportioned”—that is, that the revenues collected from each State be in proportion to population. Based on this obscure provision, prior scholarship has debated whether unapportioned wealth tax or related accrual-income tax reforms...

Wealth tax reform proposals are playing a major role in the 2020 presidential campaign. However, some opponents of these wealth tax reform proposals have claimed that a wealth tax would be unconstitutional. Other prominent critics have argued that wealth tax reforms are probably...