Treasury secretary came out against the proposed global levy, which proponents say would stop the rich from shifting wealth into countries where they can avoid paying the tax

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 month ago

    It’s easy to say “We should tax the wealthy”, but hard to make good policy that can’t be gamed, especially when attempting to do it across multiple wealthy countries.

    That’s literally what Yellen is refusing to participate in…

    Like, the reason we can’t do it, is we’re not doing it…

    If that sounds confusing, it’s because there isn’t a logical reason not to do it, besides the wealthy may donate less money to politicians

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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      1 month ago

      There are very real constitutional issues with explicit wealth taxes. It took a constitutional amendment to authorize the federal government to collect an income tax, and it’s quite possible that it would take another to authorize a wealth tax. Particularly with this Supreme Court, Congress probably doesn’t have the legal ability to impose a wealth tax even if it wanted to, to say nothing of the general complexity and costs of collecting it. There are plenty of economists who support the general idea of taxing the wealthy more but who prefer other taxation schemes.