In debates about reorienting the American revenue system, nearly everyone assumes the Constitution is irrelevant. With few exceptions, the tax provisions in the original Constitution - particularly the direct-tax apportionment rule and the uniformity rule - have been interpreted to be paper...

Informal proposals to enact a national wealth tax have been around for a while, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, while still a presidential candidate, promoted a specific form of wealth tax: a tax on the net wealth of high-net-worth individuals. Whatever the economic and ethical merits of such a...