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this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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The problem with a wealth tax is the feasibility of the tax. Every time it's ever been tried it has failed. Expecting the IRS to be able to accurately appraise everything a wealthy person owns is a tall task. As soon as you allow an exception, the wealthy avoid taxes by putting their money into that exception.
Alright, no exceptions
Okay, hire a shit ton more IRS agents and expect tax seasons to last forever as everyone gets literally everything they own appraised.
Worth it
Lol, if less complicated, that is, if there are no exceptions, then you need fewer agents
Tell me in what world do you need fewer agents to appraise literally everything owned by everybody every year? I bet you own things you've forgotten about, but some IRS agent would have to go over all of it.
In the world where you have so many loopholes, and with so much complexity, that you have to anyway keep track of who's got what, who owes what to whom, what something is worth, etc etc
Then close the loopholes. Much simpler.
Fun fact: wealthy people actively brag about their company ~~earnings~~ takings to their shareholders.
Hold them to that math. If they contest it, they agree to pay the IRS to contract additional labour to investigate subject to a refund if the reported amount is accurate, at which point they should be forced to payout the difference to all shareholders and pay an equal amount as a punitive fine.
Congratulations, you just replaced the wealth tax idea with corporate income tax. A much more feasible system.
So tax their income and asset movements to pay for an appraisal service? And carve out exceptions for non-luxuries like primary residence and farm equipment? Seems straightforward to me, but I'm far from an expert.
Build a primary residence the size of a city and sell parts of it to the poor class you keep homeless when you need to liquidate, easy
"Size of a city" should come with pretty hefty property tax I'd think. And billionaires love to be jetsetters so I image very few would want to stick to a single residence just to save on taxes.
I don't buy that.
Okay.. Well you don't have to believe it for it to be true.
But it isn't true. It's working right now in Norway, off the top of my head.
But I'd imagine very wealthy people would be willing to spend a pretty penny to convince people like you and me that it doesn't work.
Doing a quick search, it's not working out for Noway. Their tax revenue is down because the wealthy moved away.
They've had a wealth tax in Norway since 1892.
The article I looked at was an increase of the wealth tax that occurred recently. So you're right, not the start of it just a consequence of it.
What was the article? This one from November claims revenue has still increased - while ridding themselves of more wealth hoarders:
"Revenue from it has climbed despite the exodus and now sits at 0.6% of GDP"
https://www.reuters.com/business/norways-wealth-tax-trades-millionaires-equality-2025-11-24/
The solution then is to abolish private ownership so that people cannot become wealthy by exploiting the labor of others in the first place.
Think about what you're saying. Nobody should be allowed to own anything? No books, no art, no jewelry, no anything. Because literally anything can be made to be luxury and become a store of value.
I have thought about what I'm saying. The problem is you don't understand what I'm saying, but I did just kinda throw it out there with no explanation (because we're on lemmy.ml, I didn't think I needed to). I am referring to private property in the Marxian sense, where a distinction is made between private and personal property. All of the things you listed are personal property, not private property. In Marxian economics private property refers to the means of production privately owned and involved in an economic enterprise employing wage labor (i.e. factories, offices, farms) while personal property refers to consumer goods or goods produced by an individual (i.e. books, art, jewelry). What I was presenting as a solution is the abolishment of the former and not the latter, replacing private ownership instead with collective or public ownership (when workers share ownership of their tools and place of work - the means of production). This is the core idea of all anti-capitalist ideologies, though it was first articulated in this way by anarchists.
So you are making broad exceptions allowing the wealthy to buy, trade, and store their wealth there. You've ruined the entire point of the wealth tax.
But without private property no one can accumulate wealth by exploiting the labor of others. I haven't ruined the point of the wealth tax, I've preempted the need for it.
A mean, maybe. Certainly we at least agree it's a better idea than a wealth tax.