50 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 3 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
OpEdNews Op Eds   

Taxing Wealth At The Very Top; Time For A Property Tax On All Forms of Property...

By Gar Alperovitz  Posted by Rob Kall (about the submitter)       (Page 1 of 1 pages)   2 comments
Many advanced industrial countries tax not only income but wealth-including especially stocks and bonds, the most highly concentrated form of wealth. The United States does not. Is there any way to reverse this situation?

The ownership of financial and business wealth is almost Medieval in nature, so highly concentrated is the picture at the very top: A mere 1% owns just a bit under half of all such wealth in the United States!

Many observers have suggested this situation must ultimately be addressed. Yale Professors Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, for instance, have proposed a 2% tax on wealth, Colgate University professor Thomas Michl has proposed a general net-worth tax, and Hofstra Law professor Leon Friedman has urged 1% tax on wealth owned by the top 1%.

Kevin Phillips and Jeff Gates have also urged that wealth taxation must now be put on the American agenda. Robert Kuttner adds that a wealth tax is "by definition, the most progressive way to raise revenue, since it hits only the very pinnacle of the income distribution." Even Donald Trump a few years ago proposed a one time net-worth tax of 14.25% on Americans with more than $10 million in assets.

Economist Edward Wolff points out that European practice offers a range of practical options-with most imposing a tax between 1 and 2.5 percent and all exempting a reasonable amount of wealth for those not among the top groups. One recent estimate is that if the upper range of such taxes were implemented in the United States, they might yield up to $450 billion a year.

The real question is how to put the issue on the political map, and then move it forward, step by step over time. The obvious way to do so is to begin at the state level, and lay groundwork, state by state, in a manner that both helps solve state fiscal problems and simultaneously establishes precedents for future national action.

Currently the only state with a wealth tax (which it calls an "intangibles tax") is Florida, along with certain counties in Pennsylvania and Kansas. However, many states have used such taxes in the past-including Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia.

A sense of what might be possible is suggested by research recently undertaken in Washington state by the Economic Opportunity Institute. This estimated that a 0.5% tax on wealth in that state (after exempting the first $1 million) would yield $477 million in annual revenue. If the exemption were lowered to $30,000, revenues would rise to an estimated $1.2 billion.

There are reasons to believe that taxes which sharply delineate between the vast majority and privileged elites at the very top are becoming increasingly viable politically-especially given the fiscal problems facing many states. In November 2004, for instance, California voters overwhelmingly approved tax increases for people making more than $1 million, and earmarked the proceeds for mental health programs.

New Jersey has also enacted legislation taxing those making more than $500,000--and allocated the revenues to offset property taxes that fall disproportionately on the middle class and the poor. In Connecticut, a recent poll found 77 percent of voters, including 63 percent of Republicans, in favor of a tax on those making more than $1 million.

Even more interesting is a 2006 proposed initiative in California which would tax the top 1 percent (individuals making more than $400,000 and couples making more than $800,000) and would allocate the revenues to pay for quality preschool for all four-year-olds.

State wealth taxes which also target those at the very top (and could benefit up to 97-99 percent of the population!) simply take this populist trajectory to the next logical stage. They could be put forward as tax proposals on their own, or in a manner which linked the revenue produced to other important programs.

We rarely pause to reflect on the fact that for the most part the only wealth we tax directly in America is real property-in the main home ownership, the wealth holding that is common to the vast majority. Taxation of real estate, moreover, is based upon the value of the asset in general-not the value of an individual's equity: An owner of a $200,000 home will be taxed on the full value of the asset, even if her actual ownership position (with a mortgage debt of, say, $190,000) is only one-twentieth this amount. Meanwhile we do not tax stocks and bonds directly.

One way to think about wealth taxes is that they are simply a property tax applied to all forms of property-including the kind of property which is heavily concentrated among the elites. Accordingly, a particularly interesting strategy might be to use the proceeds of state wealth taxes to directly help offset property taxes on low and moderate income families.

Although wealth taxes are constitutional in virtually all states and can be put on the agenda immediately, some conservatives have suggested that a federal wealth tax might be unconstitutional. It is worth noting, accordingly, that the legal issues involved have been effectively answered in major studies by Yale's Bruce Ackerman and others.

Even if a conservative Supreme Court were ultimately to rule against such a tax, however, as in the case of the current income tax (which was once deemed unconstitutional), the fight for change could help reinvigorate progressive politics--starting at the grass-roots level and building forward, state by state, to establish foundations for ultimate longer term system-wide change.

Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is author most recently of America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty and Our Democracy <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0471667307/futu-20/ref=nosim> .



Gar Alperovitz
Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy
University of Maryland, College Park
garalper@ncesa.org

garalperovitz.com
Rate It | View Ratings

Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, (more...)
 

Related Topic(s): Taxes, Add Tags
Add to My Group(s)
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Follow Me on Twitter     Writers Guidelines

 
Contact EditorContact Editor
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

A Conspiracy Conspiracy Theory

Debunking Hillary's Specious Winning the Popular Vote Claim

Terrifying Video: "I Don't Need a Warrant, Ma'am, Under Federal Law"

Ray McGovern Discusses Brutal Arrest at Secretary Clinton's Internet Freedom Speech

Hillary's Disingenuous Claim That She's Won 2.5 Million More Votes is Bogus. Here's why

Cindy Sheehan Bugged in Denver

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend