Noah Feldman, Columnist

Wealth Tax’s Legality Depends on What ‘Direct’ Means

Elizabeth Warren’s idea is probably constitutional, but it’s not an easy call.

January 30, 2019 at 7:58 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Madison and Hamilton might disagree.
Photographer: Scott Eisen/Bloomberg

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If I were on the U.S. Supreme Court, I would probably vote to find Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax constitutional. But given the current composition of the court, that might well put me in the minority.

Warren, who is exploring a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has suggested that the top 75,000 U.S. households pay an annual tax of 2 percent on each dollar of their net worth above $50 million. Billionaires would be taxed an additional 1 percent.