Can a wealth tax actually solve our political and fiscal problems? The math says no. 

Forbes recently dropped its 2026 Forbes 400 list: The 400 richest Americans today are worth a combined $8 trillion.

Elon Musk, at the tip-top of the list, is worth an estimated $908 billion. If you spend your life thinking about taxes, as I do, a list like this naturally raises the wealth-tax question.  

One might think such a list would make an argument in favor of wealth taxation. If you think hard about the numbers, however, it actually shows how bad some arguments are in its favor. 

Two arguments for wealth taxes come up again and again. One is political power: Enormous fortunes can translate into enormous influence over elections and public policy. Defunding billionaires might eliminate their ability to bankroll politicians. The other argument is revenue: If the federal government is running huge deficits while private fortunes are huge, why not tax some of those fortunes?

Examining new data helps rebut both arguments. I took wealth estimates from Forbes’s 2016 and 2026 lists, calculated the annualized growth in those fortunes, and asked what would have happened if a 10 percent wealth tax had been imposed every year starting in 2016 while the underlying pre-tax growth path stayed the same. Ten percent is deliberately extreme, much more than most U.S. wealth-tax proposals. Think of it as a wealth stress test — would........

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