This article is a response to one written by Professor Calvin Johnson, who contends that a wealth tax like those proposed by presidential candidates Warren and Sanders would be clearly constitutional. This article argues that a wealth tax would be a direct tax and that, under the Constitution,...

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...