Imagine we institute some kind of billionaire wealth tax. How would the IRS be be able to assess it? They have no idea how much wealth I have. I might have a Matisse on my walls, or gold bullion in a safe place. OK, so they ask us all to fill out a form? All of us?
I know Forbes estimates who has a billion, but it's a rough estimate, at best. I'm not sure how it works.
For those with X million shares of stock in a publically traded company it's pretty easy, on specific days. Space X isn't, so how much is it worth?
Badger is part owner of a smaller company, how much is it worth? Do they trust his valuation?
Seems to me such a tax would encourage some folks to hide their wealth, which for billionaires is feasible (often). And would we all have to make some kind of wealth declaration to the IRS each year?
Europe mostly discovered this raised little revenue and wasn't worth the effort, what could we do differently? We have somewhere around $7 trillion in wealth by billionaires in the US, so a 2% tax on that would obviously be $140 billion a year, if collected. I suspect it would cost that much in paperwork trying to enforce it. And it's less than 10% of the current deficit.
If taxed at a higher rate, you'd have billionaires needing to sell stock, probably, which could mean the stock price would drop if they are major holders.
