What Alexander Hamilton Would Have Thought About a Wealth Tax

[turbinetree]

By Ray Raphael / History News Network
December 6, 2019

Wealth taxes are on the current political table and hotly debated. All taxation was on the framers’ table as they considered a new constitution. What would they make of the measures we are considering now? And more to the point: does the Constitution they drafted allow Congress to tax a person’s overall wealth?

The short answer: yes and no. The longer answer requires historical context.

In the six months preceding the Federal Convention of 1787, Congress received from the separate states, which alone possessed powers of taxation, a grand total of $663—hardly enough to run the nation. Little wonder that the framers’ proposal, what is now our Constitution, granted Congress sweeping authority to levy taxes: “The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises …”

Although taxing authority was broad, the framers delineated only five specific types, each with a qualification:

“Duties, Imposts, and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

“No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the Census or enumeration.”

“No Tax or Duty shall be laid on any Articles exported from any State.”

https://time.com/5745364/wealth-tax-constitution/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

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We have been through this before. In Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company (1895), the Supreme Court declared that taxing income derived from wealth (rents, interest, and dividends) was a direct tax and therefore had to be apportioned, while taxing income derived from labor (wages and salaries) was indirect and therefore did not have to be apportioned. This meant that Congress could tax working people readily, while taxing wealthy people would be unworkable. Workers cried foul. They pushed for, and got, the Sixteenth Amendment, which repudiated Pollock by lifting the apportionment requirement from all income taxes.

Today, facing rampant inequality, we can cry foul again—but we remain saddled with a provision of the Constitution geared to protect the slave-owning interests of Southern states in 1787. Even so, taxing income rather than wealth is always possible. There is no constitutional limit on the tax rate, so long as it is “uniform throughout the United States.”

[Farmer-Rick]

1. Property Tax is a wealth tax. Every state in the Union has property tax.

[MichMan]

2. That is on a state level, not federal

Nothing is preventing a state from imposing any wealth tax they desire.

[Farmer-Rick]

6. True, you know what property isn't taxed by anyone? It's something the filthy rich have the most of.

Right it's stocks and bonds.

Though the income from them might be taxable.

[Polybius]

5. I would love to get rid of that

I hate paying $5,000 a year. It's my house and property. However, I do support a wealth tax to pay for it.

[Turbineguy]

3. The wealth tax is a bit like the

guillotine. It solved a problem, but not very well.

There are many better ways of apportioning and distributing wealth that need to be looked at.

Medicare for all, no- or low tuition education, tax deduction policy. income tax rates. We obviously found out that corporations were not going to take their tax breaks and give more income to the regular workers.

[safeinOhio]

4. The key to fair a fair tax is campaign finance reform.

The rich and big business have been writing the tax laws for a long time. Take away their influence and it won't take long.