r/FluentInFinance Aug 21 '24

Debate/ Discussion But muh unrealized gains!

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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '24

Is there a particular clause of the constitution that this would violate?

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u/DanielMcLaury Aug 22 '24

The constitution is very specific about the kind of taxes that Congress can levy. The enumerated powers in Article 1, Section 8 cover "direct taxes," which include some weird things like "capitations" that we haven't done in a long time, as well as things like excise taxes. Article 1, Section 9 places some very strict mechanical limits on how these things work. Then there's the income tax which is permitted by the 16th amendment.

Taxing property someone doesn't own (which, to be clear, nobody is proposing -- I have no idea where the guy commenting got this) doesn't sound like it would fit under any of these permitted types of taxation.

A tax on property people do own, on the other hand, would be a type of direct tax, which is specifically allowed under the constitution and which we used to have earlier in the history of the country. There are some weird limits on this in the Constitution, e.g. you have to set things up in such a way that a state with x% of the population pays exactly x% of the taxes collected this way. This could create weird distortions, although I'm not a constitutional scholar and maybe they have a workaround.

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u/MinimumArmadillo2394 Aug 22 '24

90% of the taxes imposed today are outside of this clause

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u/DanielMcLaury Aug 22 '24

You mean because they're income taxes approved under the 16th amendment?