The Allocative and Efficiency Effects of Wealth Taxes

Abstract

While economists have analyzed consumption, income and (impersonal) real property taxation, relatively little research has been conducted on the effects of a personal net wealth tax or capital levies or capital transfer taxation, all of which are the subject of this paper. The conventional wisdom is that an annual net wealth tax would score highly on equity grounds but poorly on the criteria of efficiency and administrative feasibility. This paper sorts out some of the models of the allocative and efficiency effects of wealth taxation and concludes that strong positions on the effects of wealth taxation are untenable.