Progressive wealth taxation

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman set out how a progressive annual tax on very large fortunes could be designed for the United States. They address the central implementation questions: which assets and liabilities count, how difficult-to-price holdings would be valued, how the tax would interact with existing income and estate taxes, and how reporting and enforcement could limit avoidance and evasion.

The authors argue that modern information reporting, including the reach of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, gives the United States tools that earlier European wealth taxes lacked. They estimate that a well-enforced tax could raise substantial revenue and reduce wealth concentration, while acknowledging that the result depends heavily on valuation rules, enforcement capacity and the behavioral response of wealthy households—assumptions that other economists have challenged.