To the editor: To buttress his argument for a federal wealth tax (which, regardless of any allusion on the contrary, is constitutionally questionable), visitor contributor Enrico Moretti tells us, “The wealthiest Individuals can and may contribute extra to financing public companies” (“Raise taxes on billionaires federally, not state by state,” Sept. 16).
What Moretti doesn’t inform readers is that the highest 1% already pay 24% of all federal and state taxes, together with greater than 40% of federal revenue taxes (sure, simply that 1%).
Moretti additionally doesn’t inform us simply how rather more progressive the trendy revenue tax has become since its implementation greater than 110 years in the past — maybe for worry of dropping his skill to at all times say they by no means pay sufficient.
Observe that the 1% pay roughly 40% of California revenue taxes and 12% of all California taxes of any sort. And all that disparity has completed is create a society of the wealthy and their skilled advisers, and turned the remainder of the inhabitants into serfs (with excessive unemployment, staggering homelessness and one of the vital costly and poorest-performing schooling programs within the U.S.).
Moretti desires to export that to all the nation.
Kip Dellinger, Santa Monica
This author is the previous tax coverage and follow columnist for Tax Notes journal.
