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New from @equitablegrowth: “Net worth taxes: what they are and how they work” provides the background you need to understand wealth taxes. Some highlights: equitablegrowth.org/research-paper…
The wealthiest 1 percent of U.S. households own about 40 percent of all wealth according to the Survey of Consumer Finances 
Wealth inequality has been increasing in recent decades
Wealth varies widely by age, race and ethnicity, and education
The wealth of middle-class families consists primarily of home equity and retirement accounts while that of high-wealth families consists substantially of business equity and financial assets other than retirement accounts
A net worth tax is computed as a percentage of wealth—the difference between the value of assets and liabilities—after subtracting an exemption
There is a close relationship between taxing wealth and taxing income—under certain conditions they can yield identical results
Net worth taxes were once common in the OECD, but the number of countries with net worth taxes has decreased in recent decades
The shift away from net worth taxes is part of a broader trend of reduced taxation of the wealthy—a trend that is also reflected in reductions in top income tax rates and top corporate tax rates
Interestingly, while the United States does not have a net worth tax, the U.S. reliance on property taxes (defined as recurrent taxes on immovable property for purposes of the international comparison) is unusual in the OECD
Also released today, a brief compiling some of the charts in the main report on the distribution of wealth in the United States equitablegrowth.org/the-distributi…
