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The Common Sense Of A Wealth Tax: Thomas Paine & Taxation As Freedom From Aristocracy, Jeremy Bearer-Friend, Vanessa Williamson
The Common Sense Of A Wealth Tax: Thomas Paine & Taxation As Freedom From Aristocracy, Jeremy Bearer-Friend, Vanessa Williamson
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Thomas Paine’s writing helped spur the American colonies to independence and ensure that the new nation would be a republic, not a monarchy. In light of the renewed interest in wealth taxes, this article provides a close examination of Thomas Paine’s wealth tax proposal in the second volume of The Rights of Man. Unlike Paine’s proposal to tax inheritances, his 1792 proposal to tax wealth on an annual basis is often overlooked. The article identifies Paine’s various design specifications, provides original estimates of the impact of Paine’s wealth tax proposal within his own time period and as applied to billionaires …
Tax Now Or Tax Never: Political Optionality And The Case For Current-Assessment Tax Reform, David Gamage, John R. Brooks
Tax Now Or Tax Never: Political Optionality And The Case For Current-Assessment Tax Reform, David Gamage, John R. Brooks
Faculty Scholarship
The U.S. income tax system is broken. Due to the realization doctrine and taxpayers’ consequent ability to defer taxation of gains, taxpayers can easily minimize or avoid the taxation of investment income, a failure that is magnified many times over when considering the ultra-wealthy. As a result, this small group of taxpayers commands an enormous share of national wealth yet pays paltry taxes relative to the economic income their wealth produces—a predicament that this Article condemns as being economically, politically, and socially harmful. The conventional view among tax law experts has assumed that the problems created by the realization doctrine …
The Parallel March Of The Ginis: How Does Taxation Relate To Inequality, And What Can Be Done About It?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
The Parallel March Of The Ginis: How Does Taxation Relate To Inequality, And What Can Be Done About It?, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Articles
The United States currently has one of the highest levels of inequality among industrialized economies. In addition, numerous scholars have shown that social mobility in the United States is significantly lower than it was in the period between 1945 and 1970, when inequality was declining. The combination of these trends is dangerous because it risks transforming the United States into a society where small elites capture most of the gains, a pattern in which growth cannot be sustained over time. The level of inequality in the United States after taxes and transfers are taken into account is much lower, but …