Date: Wednesday, 09 September 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/taxes-the-main-plank-of-my-proposed
https://theduran.com/taxes-the-main-plank-of-my-proposed-progressive-
TAXES: The Main Plank of My Proposed Progressive Domestic Policy Program
8 September 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
Taxes are the basic plank because they structure the society’s incentives more than does any other part of the nation’s legal system. A key existing incentive against progressive taxation is that to increase taxes upon billionaires can incentivize billionaires to remove their wealth to foreign countries that have more regressive taxes (tax the rich less) and so there is an international race to the bottom in favor of regressive taxes, so as to attract the rich and their investments.
I noticed today the September 5th Bloomberg article “Spotify’s Lorentzon Says He’d Leave Sweden If Wealth Tax Imposed”. So, I asked ChatGPT,
“MARTIN LORENTZON THREATENS TO MOVE ABROAD IF SWEDEN INSTITUTES WEALTH TAXES. WHAT PERCENT OF HIS NET WORTH COULD SWEDEN SEIZE IF HE DOES?”
Yes. Martin Lorentzon has now said that if Sweden introduces the proposed new wealth taxation, he would leave “immediately.” The crucial point, however, is that leaving Sweden does not presently allow Sweden simply to confiscate some fixed percentage of his fortune.
Lorentzon's current net worth is about $11.7 billion, according to Forbes.
Under current Swedish law, Sweden has no wealth tax. The Swedish Tax Agency explicitly says that Sweden no longer levies one. So if Lorentzon genuinely changes his tax residence before a new wealth tax becomes applicable, the amount Sweden could take merely because he emigrated is essentially:
0% of his net worth.
There is an important qualification. Sweden has a 10-year rule under which some capital gains on shares can remain within Swedish taxing jurisdiction after a person leaves Sweden. That isn't a tax on his $11.7 billion fortune, however. It generally becomes relevant if he sells shares, and tax treaties can restrict Sweden's ability to collect it.
Furthermore, simply announcing a move would not necessarily terminate Swedish tax residence. For a Swedish citizen, during the first five years after departure the taxpayer bears the burden of showing that he no longer has sufficiently strong ties to Sweden; substantial business interests, a home, family, etc. can matter.
But I suspect you're asking a somewhat different and more interesting question: What could Sweden legally take from Lorentzon before he escaped its taxing jurisdiction, under the wealth-tax proposals that prompted his threat? That requires examining the Left Party and Green Party proposals themselves—the rates, thresholds, treatment of company shares, and any proposed exit provisions. If you want, I can calculate the maximum dollar amount and percentage of Lorentzon's $11.7 billion that each proposal could actually take from him.
“I AM ESPECIALLY INTERESTED IN KNOWING WHETHER ANY CREATIVE IMAGINATIVE MEASURES MIGHT BE ABLE TO BE PASSED IN SWEDEN OR ANYWHERE ELSE, TO SEIZE THE WEALTH OF ANY BILLIONAIRE WHO TRIES TO FLEE ABROAD WITH HIS/HER WEALTH.”
Yes. A country could enact measures that make emigrating unable to erase a billionaire's pre-existing tax liability. The most important distinction is between confiscating wealth because someone leaves and taxing wealth or gains accumulated while the person was subject to the country's jurisdiction, with emigration triggering collection. The latter already exists in several countries and could be made considerably stronger.
Sweden is actually debating precisely this. In the 2025–26 Riksdag, Social Democrats proposed an effective exit-tax system covering capital gains accumulated in Sweden when an individual emigrates; the Left also proposed examining an exit tax. The parliamentary tax committee rejected those motions under the present majority. And the current billionaire-tax debate explicitly includes concern among rich Swedes about a possible exit tax.
How far could a government conceivably go?
Suppose Lorentzon has $12 billion and Sweden enacted the following before he ceased being Swedish-tax-resident:
This isn't entirely hypothetical. Norway has already implemented much of the machinery. Its exit tax covers shares, funds, investment accounts, options and various financial instruments; it taxes appreciation accumulated while the taxpayer was Norwegian-resident. Payment generally must occur within 12 years. Norway can require security for the debt, and transfers of covered assets abroad can trigger payment. Most strikingly, when someone who has deferred the exit tax receives a company distribution, 70% of the distribution can be required to go toward paying the exit-tax debt (subject to a 100%-of-distribution ceiling after other relevant taxes).
France likewise imposes an exit tax on certain unrealized capital gains when sufficiently large shareholders transfer their tax residence abroad.
But you could design something considerably more aggressive
Here is the particularly interesting possibility.
Instead of saying,
"If you leave Sweden, Sweden confiscates 50% of your fortune,"
the statute could establish a billionaire wealth tax while the individual is still resident, coupled with an election:
Pay the wealth tax annually, or defer it until emigration/death.
For illustration, suppose the law imposed a 5% annual tax on billionaire wealth and permitted indefinite deferral, with the deferred amount accruing interest. A billionaire couldn't defeat the system by leaving. Departure would merely accelerate a tax liability that arose while he was Swedish-resident.
An even more formidable system could tax economic appreciation annually. Imagine Lorentzon's Spotify shares originally attributable to his investment/entrepreneurial activity in Sweden had a tax basis of $100 million and were worth $10 billion when he departed. Sweden could deem the departure to constitute a sale:
Taxable accrued gain = $10.0B − $0.1B = $9.9B.
At a hypothetical 50% exit capital-gains rate:
Tax = $4.95 billion.
That would effectively capture 49.5% of that $10 billion holding, without legally describing the measure as confiscation of half his property.
There is an even stronger theoretical mechanism
A legislature could create what amounts to a public equity claim rather than requiring cash.
For example:
Upon expatriation, an individual with net wealth exceeding SEK 10 billion must satisfy the exit tax either in cash or by transferring marketable securities of equivalent value to the Swedish state.
Thus someone with $12 billion who owed $5 billion wouldn't have to find $5 billion in cash. Sweden could receive $5 billion worth of shares.
That solves one of the central practical objections to very large exit taxes: "My wealth isn't cash; it's my company."
And the tax needn't entail Sweden running Spotify. The government could transfer the shares to a sovereign wealth fund, which could hold or gradually sell them.
Could Sweden take 100%?
Here we reach the legal boundary.
A legislature possesses considerable taxation power, but calling something a "tax" doesn't automatically immunize it from constitutional, EU-law, human-rights, proportionality, free-movement, treaty, and property-rights challenges. A law saying essentially "Billionaires who emigrate surrender everything" would be extraordinarily vulnerable legally and politically.
There is also an important economic distinction:
100% of wealth is radically different from 100% of appreciation accrued while resident.
Consider someone who invested $100 million and leaves with $10 billion.
A 100% tax on the $9.9 billion gain leaves his original $100 million.
That's economically almost total confiscation of the fortune, but conceptually the government can make a much stronger argument: We aren't taking property merely because you emigrated; we're taxing economic gains that accrued while you were participating in Swedish society and postponing collection until you leave.
Whether a 100% rate would survive Swedish constitutional and EU-law review is a separate—and difficult—question.
And Sweden isn't starting from nowhere. The Riksdag itself records that Sweden currently stands out because it has neither a wealth tax nor inheritance/gift tax nor a full-value property tax, and proposals now call for a special billionaire tax.
So Lorentzon's threat actually identifies the fundamental design problem rather neatly: a wealth tax without an exit tax gives the people most affected an incentive to leave before it bites. A wealth tax combined with a pre-enacted exit tax can make leaving irrelevant to taxation of wealth accumulated before departure.
If you want to pursue the outer limit, I can investigate something even more specific: What is the highest percentage of Martin Lorentzon's roughly $12 billion fortune that Sweden could plausibly capture under an aggressively designed law while still having a serious chance of surviving (1) Sweden's Constitution, (2) EU free-movement law, and (3) the European Convention on Human Rights? That could give us an actual estimated maximum percentage rather than merely hypothetical possibilities.
“I WANT TO PROPOSE MEASURES APPLICABLE NOT ONLY TO SWEDEN OR OTHER U.S. COLONIES, BUT THAT WOULD BE ESPECIALLY APPLICABLE UNDER THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IF PASSED BY THE U.S. CONGRESS.”
Yes. And the United States is actually an unusually interesting case, because Congress already has an exit-tax mechanism that could provide the statutory architecture for something far more aggressive.
Under IRC §877A, a sufficiently wealthy American who relinquishes U.S. citizenship is already treated as though he sold essentially all of his worldwide property at fair market value the day before expatriation. The resulting unrealized gain is thereby brought into the tax system.
So if your objective is to formulate a proposal along the lines of:
A billionaire should not be able to accumulate a fortune under the protection and economic system of a country and then escape taxation of that accumulated fortune simply by moving himself or his assets abroad,
I would build the proposal around taxation of accumulated gains, rather than literal governmental "seizure" of wealth. That distinction could be enormously important constitutionally.
A particularly strong U.S. version
Congress could amend §877A approximately as follows:
1. Billionaire departure tax. Anyone whose worldwide net worth exceeds, say, $1 billion who relinquishes U.S. citizenship or long-term tax residence would undergo a mandatory mark-to-market reckoning of worldwide assets immediately before expatriation—essentially extending the mechanism Congress already uses.
2. Extremely progressive rate on accumulated gains. Instead of applying ordinary capital-gains rates, Congress could establish special brackets—for illustration, 50%, 70%, 80%, perhaps ultimately 90%—on gains above enormous thresholds.
Thus, someone who founded a corporation with a $10 million basis and whose shares became worth $10.01 billion would have approximately $10 billion of accrued gain. An 80% departure rate would produce approximately an $8 billion federal liability.
This would be constitutionally much safer than saying, "The United States takes 80% of every billionaire's property when he leaves." The latter looks very much like a direct tax upon property. Moore v. United States reaffirmed that direct taxes remain subject to the Constitution's apportionment requirement, and the Court deliberately did not decide whether Congress can tax unrealized appreciation as "income" without apportionment.
Consequently, I would not base your proposal primarily upon an annual federal wealth tax. Its constitutionality remains considerably less secure.
But there is a more ingenious possibility
Congress needn't wait for the billionaire to renounce citizenship.
The United States is unusual because American citizens generally remain subject to U.S. federal income taxation even while living abroad. Merely moving from California to Monaco doesn't ordinarily free an American billionaire from the federal income-tax system.
Therefore Congress could distinguish:
physical emigration → U.S. taxation continues;
renunciation of citizenship → accumulated-gain exit tax becomes immediately payable.
That closes the most obvious escape route.
Congress could then strengthen collection by providing that a billionaire anticipating expatriation must provide adequate security for the tax liability before receiving permission to defer payment. Existing §877A already permits deferral of exit-tax liability but conditions it upon providing adequate security.
That security could consist of the billionaire's shares themselves.
For example, suppose someone owned $20 billion of publicly traded stock and incurred a $12 billion departure-tax liability. Instead of forcing an immediate $12 billion fire sale, federal law could permit:
$12 billion tax liability → $12 billion of stock pledged to Treasury → Treasury gradually collects/sells the collateral.
That eliminates the familiar objection that "billionaires don't have billions sitting in checking accounts."
And Congress could attack transfers before departure
Otherwise the obvious strategy becomes:
Give the fortune to trusts/children/entities → expatriate → claim to possess little wealth.
An effective statute therefore needs a look-back period.
For example, covered transfers during the 10 years preceding expatriation could be included in determining the expatriate's departure-tax liability unless the transfer had already borne an equivalent federal tax.
Congress could also make certain transfers by a covered billionaire to foreign trusts immediately taxable. Existing federal tax law already contains elaborate regimes dealing with foreign trusts and expatriation; this wouldn't require inventing an entirely new conceptual category.
And another potentially powerful approach would be a succession tax. Existing §2801 already imposes special tax consequences when a "covered expatriate" later makes certain gifts or bequests to U.S. persons. Congress therefore already recognizes expatriation as relevant to the taxation of subsequent wealth transfers.
I would not propose preventing the billionaire from leaving
That introduces unnecessary constitutional problems.
Nor would I propose:
Renounce your citizenship and we confiscate your property.
Citizenship itself has unusually strong constitutional protection. Afroyim v. Rusk and Vance v. Terrazas establish that Congress cannot simply strip citizenship from an American; relinquishment ultimately depends upon the citizen's intent.
There is no need to fight that battle.
Instead:
You are entirely free to leave. You are entirely free to relinquish your citizenship. But doing so does not erase federal taxation of economic gains accumulated before your departure.
That is a much stronger constitutional position.
The genuinely difficult question is: How close to 100% could Congress go?
This is where I think your proposed measure becomes particularly interesting.
Suppose:
Congress could theoretically say that the first $1 billion of accumulated gain receives conventional taxation, but accumulated gains above $1 billion receive increasingly high rates:
|
Accumulated gain |
Hypothetical exit rate |
|
$0–$100M |
ordinary capital-gains rate |
|
$100M–$1B |
40% |
|
$1B–$5B |
60% |
|
$5B–$10B |
80% |
|
Over $10B |
90% |
That is not equivalent to confiscating 90% of someone's total property. It is an extraordinarily progressive income/gain tax triggered by departure.
There would certainly be constitutional litigation. Most importantly, Moore expressly declined to decide whether unrealized appreciation can itself constitutionally be taxed as income. And extraordinarily punitive rates could generate additional constitutional arguments.
But here's the striking fact for your purposes:
Congress doesn't need to invent the fundamental mechanism. It enacted it in 2008.
The IRS describes §877A in remarkably straightforward terms: a covered expatriate is deemed to have sold "all property" at fair market value on the day before expatriation, and the resulting gain becomes taxable.
So I think the fruitful next question is narrower than "Can America confiscate a fleeing billionaire's fortune?"
It is:
How could Congress rewrite the already-existing §877A expatriation tax so that an American billionaire could neither expatriate himself nor expatriate his fortune without paying a very large percentage of the economic gains accumulated before expatriation—and what is the highest rate that has a defensible chance of surviving the present Supreme Court?
I can work that out next, including Takings Clause, Due Process, Direct Tax Clause, Sixteenth Amendment, Excessive Fines Clause, retroactivity, and Supreme Court precedent, and then formulate the strongest proposed federal statute that I think could plausibly survive constitutional review.
Connection interrupted. Waiting for the complete answer
“PLEASE DO.”
Yes. After checking the constitutional cases and the present Internal Revenue Code, I would modify one important part of my previous answer. The strongest U.S. proposal should not depend upon Congress's power to tax unrealized appreciation. After Moore v. United States (2024), that question remains deliberately unresolved by the Supreme Court.
Instead, I think Congress could construct something substantially harder to attack constitutionally—and potentially capable of collecting most of the accumulated capital gain of a billionaire who renounces U.S. citizenship to escape U.S. taxation.
The strongest design I would propose
Call it, for convenience, the Billionaire Anti-Tax-Flight Act.
The central principle would be:
A person may leave the United States and may relinquish U.S. citizenship, but neither act extinguishes the United States' taxing claim upon income and capital gains that accrued economically while that person was a U.S. citizen.
The law would contain six interconnected mechanisms.
1. Keep citizenship-based taxation exactly as it is until citizenship is actually relinquished.
This is already an enormous U.S. advantage. Moving one's residence to Switzerland, Monaco, Singapore, etc., does not by itself terminate U.S. federal income-tax liability for an American citizen. Cook v. Tait upheld federal taxation of the foreign income of an American citizen permanently living abroad.
So merely "fleeing America" accomplishes remarkably little.
2. Upon expatriation, determine every asset's accrued gain—but don't necessarily tax the unrealized gain immediately.
Present §877A goes further: it says that essentially all property of a covered expatriate is deemed sold at fair-market value immediately before expatriation.
I would retain that calculation but create a constitutionally safer alternative:
The United States establishes the amount of pre-expatriation appreciation on departure, but where the appreciation hasn't actually been realized, taxation can be deferred until actual realization.
That neatly sidesteps the great unresolved issue in Moore. The Court expressly said:
“We do not decide” whether realization is constitutionally required for an income tax.
Suppose:
Original basis: $10 million
Value upon expatriation: $10.010 billion
Pre-expatriation accrued gain: $10.000 billion
The government records that $10 billion as pre-expatriation gain.
If the billionaire subsequently sells the shares for $12 billion, the United States taxes the $10 billion that had accrued through expatriation. The subsequent $2 billion could generally belong to the post-expatriation taxing jurisdiction.
That makes the underlying constitutional argument exceptionally simple:
Congress isn't taxing his wealth. Congress is taxing a $10 billion capital gain when that gain is actually realized.
3. Make the rate extremely progressive
There is no Supreme Court decision establishing a maximum constitutional income-tax rate such as 50%, 70%, 80%, or 90%.
Indeed, Brushaber v. Union Pacific rejected the argument that progressive federal income taxation becomes unconstitutional because higher incomes are subjected to progressively higher rates.
Therefore Congress could enact something like:
|
Pre-expatriation accumulated gain |
Rate |
|
First $10 million |
ordinary capital-gains rate |
|
$10M–$100M |
30% |
|
$100M–$1B |
50% |
|
$1B–$5B |
70% |
|
Above $5B |
90% |
I emphasize that I cannot say that the Supreme Court would uphold 90%. Nobody can, because the Court has never established such a boundary.
But neither can one correctly say that the Constitution contains some maximum tax rate below 90%.
And there is a strategically important drafting point: don't call the additional rate a penalty for expatriating.
Congress should say that these are tax brackets applicable to previously untaxed capital gains of extraordinarily large magnitude when the taxpayer leaves the ordinary U.S. taxing system.
That matters because the Supreme Court has held that an ostensible "tax" can become constitutionally different if its characteristics make it punishment.
4. Require collateral before permitting deferred payment
Here is what makes the scheme difficult to evade.
The billionaire doesn't get to say:
Fine. I'll owe America $8 billion someday, but all my assets will be in Liechtenstein.
Congress can provide:
If payment of the departure tax is deferred until realization, sufficient property must secure the government's eventual tax claim.
This isn't conceptually foreign to §877A. Existing law already provides for deferral of certain expatriation-tax payments and contains security requirements.
For a founder whose wealth consists principally of corporate shares, therefore, the taxpayer could pledge shares.
He retains ownership.
He retains whatever voting rights Congress permits.
He doesn't have to sell them.
But the Treasury possesses enforceable security sufficient to collect the eventual tax.
That is much more defensible than confiscating the shares.
5. Transfers don't defeat it
Otherwise the obvious weakness would be transferring property to trusts, corporations, foundations, relatives, etc.
The statute therefore needs a rule based upon beneficial economic ownership rather than nominal title, together with appropriate look-back provisions for transfers made in anticipation of expatriation.
The existing Code already provides useful architecture. Section 2801 reaches certain gifts and bequests from covered expatriates to U.S. citizens and residents, including indirect transfers, and the regulations expressly address transfers through corporations, trusts and other arrangements.
So Congress would not be inventing the concept of looking through intermediaries.
But I would be cautious about retroactivity. United States v. Carlton allows retroactive tax legislation when supported by a legitimate legislative purpose and rational means, but the Court specifically noted that the retroactivity there was relatively modest.
Consequently, the strongest law would be enacted prospectively and would announce beforehand that covered transactions after enactment cannot eliminate the government's claim.
6. Don't punish departure itself
This is, I think, the most important constitutional drafting choice.
Don't write:
If a billionaire leaves America, the Government takes 90% of his fortune.
Write:
If a taxpayer relinquishes United States citizenship or otherwise terminates covered United States tax status, previously untaxed gains economically accrued during the covered period remain subject to federal income taxation upon realization, notwithstanding subsequent residence, citizenship, situs, transfer, or custody of the property.
Now expatriation isn't a crime.
There is no fine for leaving.
There is no governmental prohibition against leaving.
There isn't even necessarily immediate confiscation.
There is simply no escape from taxation of the gain by leaving first and realizing it afterward.
That also helps enormously under the Eighth Amendment. Bajakajian establishes that the Excessive Fines Clause applies when the government extracts property as punishment.
A genuine revenue measure taxing realized income presents a very different constitutional case.
How much could Congress take?
This produces a fascinating answer to your original question.
Suppose a founder put $10 million into a company and his shares are worth $20.01 billion when he renounces citizenship.
His accumulated gain is:
$20.01B − $0.01B = $20.00B.
Suppose Congress taxed the portion exceeding $5 billion at 90%, with the lower portions taxed according to the illustrative brackets above.
Approximately:
First $10M at, say, 20% = $2M
Next $90M at 30% = $27M
Next $900M at 50% = $450M
Next $4B at 70% = $2.8B
Remaining $15B at 90% = $13.5B
Total federal tax = approximately $16.779 billion.
That's about:
83.9% of the $20 billion gain
and about
83.9% of the $20.01 billion fortune.
Yet legally the government hasn't enacted an 83.9% wealth confiscation.
It has enacted a progressive income tax upon $20 billion of capital gain.
And if Congress instead imposed a flat 90% rate upon pre-expatriation realized gains above a sufficiently high billionaire threshold, the effective governmental capture could approach 90% of the fortune when virtually the entire fortune consists of appreciation.
Could Congress impose 100%?
Here I would stop.
A 100% rate is qualitatively more vulnerable because it provides an opponent with an extraordinarily powerful argument that the purported tax has ceased functioning as taxation and has become confiscation.
There is old Supreme Court language recognizing an extreme boundary: a purported tax may be unconstitutional if it is so arbitrary that in substance it constitutes the exercise of some forbidden power, such as “the confiscation of property.” That principle hasn't disappeared entirely. And NFIB v. Sebelius reiterated that there comes a point where the penal characteristics of an ostensible tax can transform it into something else.
So I would not propose 100% if the objective is maximum wealth capture consistent with maximum constitutional defensibility.
I would propose 90% as the top marginal rate, but I would explicitly describe that number as an aggressive legislative choice whose constitutionality at that extraordinary rate has not been decided by the Supreme Court.
There is an even stronger version
I've realized in researching your question that Congress could separate expatriation from the rate altogether.
This would probably be preferable.
Instead of:
“90% tax if a billionaire expatriates”
Congress could enact:
“90% marginal federal income-tax rate on realized capital gains exceeding $5 billion attributable to appreciation occurring while the taxpayer was a U.S. citizen.”
Then expatriation merely determines when the period of U.S.-attributable appreciation ends.
That removes much of the appearance that Congress is punishing the exercise of the right to leave the country.
A billionaire who remains in America and realizes a $10 billion gain pays the same rate.
A billionaire who moves to Monaco and remains an American citizen pays the same rate.
A billionaire who renounces American citizenship and subsequently realizes the $10 billion pre-expatriation gain pays the same rate.
Leaving produces no tax penalty whatsoever.
It merely fails to erase the tax.
That is, in my judgment, considerably stronger constitutionally than the proposal I gave you in my previous answer.
And it leads to what I think could be the core sentence of the proposal you are contemplating:
No billionaire should be prohibited from taking himself or his property out of the United States; Congress should instead provide that neither expatriation of the person nor expatriation of the property extinguishes federal taxation of capital gains attributable to the period during which that person was subject to United States taxation.
There is one additional possibility that may be even more powerful: Congress could make this work without a 90% rate at all, by combining ordinary taxation, estate/gift taxation, an anti-expatriation accrual rule, and a federal secured interest in the relevant assets. I think it is worth examining that version too, because it might capture nearly as much money while being considerably harder for the present Supreme Court to invalidate.
“PLEASE EXPLORE THAT AND EXPLAIN WHY IT WOULD BE “CONSIDERABLY HARDER FOR THE PRESENT SUPREME COURT TO INVALIDATE.””
Yes. After looking more closely at the Supreme Court precedents, I think there is a substantially more constitutionally secure architecture than simply imposing a 90% "exit tax." The key is to use several kinds of taxation that the Supreme Court has already upheld, and to make expatriation merely an anti-avoidance event rather than the taxable offense.
The basic idea would be:
Don't confiscate a billionaire's wealth for leaving. Tax realized income, gifts, inheritances, and transfers at very high progressive rates regardless of whether the billionaire stays or leaves, and preserve the United States' claims against assets moved abroad.
That matters enormously under the present Court.
1. Start with realized capital gains, not wealth
I would make the centerpiece a highly progressive tax on realized capital gains, applicable identically to people who remain Americans and people who expatriate.
For illustration:
|
Annual realized capital gains |
Marginal federal rate |
|
Under $10M |
existing/ordinary rates |
|
$10M–$100M |
30% |
|
$100M–$1B |
50% |
|
$1B–$5B |
70% |
|
Above $5B |
80% |
Those particular rates are policy choices, not constitutionally established limits.
The important thing is that this is unquestionably much closer to the heartland of the Sixteenth Amendment than an annual wealth tax.
The present Court's Moore v. United States decision expressly refused to decide whether Congress can impose an unapportioned tax on wealth, net worth, or unrealized appreciation.
That uncertainty disappears when Jeff Bezos, for example, actually sells $10 billion of appreciated stock. There is then realized income.
Furthermore, progressive income taxation itself has extraordinarily strong precedent. Brushaber v. Union Pacific rejected constitutional objections to graduated federal income taxation.
So this avoids what would probably be the present Court's easiest route for destroying a billionaire wealth tax:
Article I Direct Tax Clause → unapportioned property tax → unconstitutional.
2. Add a very high progressive estate tax
This is potentially even more constitutionally formidable.
Suppose Congress enacted:
Net taxable estate above $1 billion → 80% marginal estate-tax rate.
Again, 80% is illustrative.
Unlike a federal wealth tax, the Supreme Court has specifically held that a federal inheritance/succession tax is not the kind of direct property tax that must be apportioned among the states.
In Knowlton v. Moore (1900), the Court upheld the federal inheritance tax. It treated the taxable event as the transmission of property at death, rather than mere ownership of the property. It also upheld graduated taxation.
And Fernandez v. Wiener subsequently explained the distinction particularly clearly: Congress can tax the shifting at death of rights associated with property without apportionment, because the tax isn't imposed simply because somebody owns property.
That distinction is immensely useful:
Annual wealth tax:
"You own $20 billion; therefore pay X% of it."
versus
Estate tax:
"You have transferred $20 billion at death; that transfer is the taxable event."
The latter sits on more than a century of Supreme Court precedent.
3. Match it with an equally strong gift tax
Otherwise the billionaire says:
Fine. I'll give everything to my children the day before I die.
Congress can close that route.
And here the precedent is again exceptionally favorable. In Bromley v. McCaughn (1929), the Supreme Court upheld the federal gift tax as an excise upon the exercise of a property right, rather than a direct tax upon property requiring apportionment.
So Congress could create approximately matching rates:
Transfer $5 billion while alive → gift tax.
Transfer $5 billion at death → estate tax.
Neither route permits the fortune simply to pass intact to the next generation.
The Court has furthermore upheld graduated taxation and exemptions in this general area.
This is why combining taxes is more powerful constitutionally than trying to accomplish everything through a wealth tax.
4. Now deal with the fleeing billionaire
Here is where I would modify existing §877A.
Current federal law already says that a "covered expatriate" is generally treated as having sold all property at fair-market value on the day before expatriation.
That is extraordinarily useful statutory machinery.
But Moore creates an unnecessary constitutional uncertainty if Congress enormously increases the tax on the resulting unrealized appreciation. The Court explicitly reserved that issue. Moreover, Justices Barrett and Alito indicated that they regard realization as constitutionally important, while Justices Thomas and Gorsuch took an even stronger realization-required position.
So I would give the expatriate two choices.
Choice A — settle immediately
Treat everything as sold and pay the departure assessment.
Choice B — don't pay until actual realization
The government records:
Value when U.S. tax status ends − tax basis = pre-expatriation appreciation.
No income tax need yet be collected on that appreciation.
When the asset is actually sold, the appropriate portion of the realized gain remains subject to U.S. taxation.
That substantially neutralizes the Moore objection.
The billionaire can say:
"You can't tax my unrealized $15 billion gain."
Treasury responds:
"Fine. We aren't. Sell it and then you have realized income."
5. But Treasury takes security
This is the piece that makes the whole system practically enforceable.
Suppose:
Stock value: $20B
Cost basis: $100M
Potential federal tax liability: $12B.
The billionaire wants to relinquish citizenship without immediately selling his company.
Fine.
He pledges sufficient shares to secure the potential tax.
That isn't an exotic invention. Present §877A already requires "adequate security" when an expatriate elects to defer payment of the existing exit tax. The statute expressly permits a bond or other forms of security satisfying Treasury requirements.
Congress could strengthen that dramatically.
The assets remain his.
Government hasn't confiscated them.
He can continue owning the company.
But he cannot move everything beyond effective American collection and subsequently tell Treasury:
Come find me.
The government's claim is already secured.
6. And expatriation would NOT increase his tax rate
I now think this is the most important improvement over the previous proposal.
Suppose Congress establishes an 80% top marginal rate on realized gains above $5 billion.
American billionaire living in New York: 80%.
American billionaire living in Monaco: 80%.
Former American who subsequently realizes gain accumulated during his American tax period: 80% on that attributable gain.
The rate doesn't change because he emigrated.
That severely weakens an argument that the statute is actually punishment for exercising a right to expatriate.
The law instead says:
You were liable for American taxation while American. Leaving America doesn't retroactively erase that liability.
That is a very different proposition.
7. Then surround it with gift and estate taxation
This closes the remaining exits.
The billionaire can't easily solve the problem by:
Sell → taxed as realized gain.
Give assets away → gift tax.
Hold them until death → estate tax.
Renounce citizenship → pre-expatriation gains remain within the system.
Move the assets overseas → government's claim is secured before deferred collection is permitted.
Transfer through a foreign trust → special anti-avoidance rules.
Congress already has part of this architecture. Section 2801 imposes special taxation upon certain gifts and bequests received from "covered expatriates," and specifically contains rules involving foreign trusts.
The new statute would therefore be an expansion and integration of existing federal tax mechanisms, rather than creation of an unprecedented governmental power.
Why would this be considerably harder for the present Supreme Court to invalidate?
Because it deprives the Court of several relatively straightforward constitutional grounds for doing so.
Direct Tax Clause
A billionaire wealth tax presents the Court with the unresolved question:
Is this an unapportioned direct tax upon property?
Moore explicitly left wealth and net-worth taxes outside its holding.
Our scheme doesn't require that question to be answered.
Realized income → Sixteenth Amendment.
Gift → established excise precedent.
Inheritance/estate → established succession-tax precedent.
That is much safer.
Realization
Again, Moore carefully declined to determine whether realization is constitutionally necessary.
Our strongest version says:
Fine. Assume that it is necessary.
We collect the capital-gains tax when realization occurs.
That potentially takes the central constitutional weapon of Moore's challengers completely off the table.
Punishment for expatriation
Don't impose a 90% tax because somebody leaves.
Apply the same substantive rates to everyone.
Expatriation merely triggers accounting, preservation of the U.S. claim, and security requirements.
That makes it much harder to characterize the law as a punitive forfeiture masquerading as taxation.
Takings Clause
Again, don't confiscate his company.
Create a tax liability and require collateral for deferred payment.
Taxes have historically not been analyzed simply as governmental takings requiring just compensation. More importantly, existing §877A already conditions deferred exit-tax payment upon adequate security.
So the government can say:
"We aren't taking your $20 billion company without compensation. You owe a tax. If you want us to postpone collecting it while you place yourself outside ordinary U.S. jurisdiction, secure the debt."
That is a much stronger position.
Due Process
Make the legislation prospective.
Congress should announce:
Beginning January 1, 2028, these rules apply.
No attempt to declare that somebody's perfectly lawful transfer 20 years ago suddenly generated an enormous tax.
Although the Supreme Court has permitted some retroactive taxation—United States v. Carlton, for example—it has treated the novelty and length of retroactivity as relevant considerations.
There is no reason to create that vulnerability.
And this produces an interesting result
Consider a billionaire with:
Fortune: $20 billion
Basis: $1 billion
Unrealized appreciation: $19 billion.
Congress doesn't need an annual wealth tax to place most of that fortune ultimately within the federal tax system.
If he sells, the $19B becomes realized capital gain.
If he gives the $20B away, the gift tax applies.
If he dies owning it, estate taxation applies.
If he renounces citizenship, America preserves its claim upon the $19B of pre-expatriation appreciation and requires security if collection is deferred.
So there is no need to prohibit him from moving the money.
Let him move it.
The objective is to make moving it incapable of extinguishing the tax claim.
And that suggests an important refinement to your original formulation. I wouldn't describe the proposal as legislation "to seize the wealth of any billionaire who tries to flee abroad." That wording makes the proposal sound punitive and confiscatory—and describes the constitutionally weakest version of the idea.
I would formulate the principle much more precisely:
Congress should make it impossible for a billionaire to escape an otherwise applicable federal tax liability by expatriating either himself or his wealth.
Then Congress can decide separately how progressive the underlying income, capital-gains, gift, and estate taxes ought to be.
That separation—high taxation on one side, anti-flight enforcement on the other—is precisely what makes the constitutional case considerably stronger.
“THANK YOU FOR HAVING NOW ENABLED ME TO PROPOSE WHAT WOULD BE THE MAIN PLANK OF MY PROPOSED PROGRESSIVE DOMESTIC POLICY PLATFORM.”
You're welcome. The important conceptual achievement is the separation you've now got between the substantive tax policy and the anti-flight mechanism.
That permits the plank to be framed not as punishing billionaires for leaving, but as a general principle: leaving the country, renouncing citizenship, transferring assets abroad, or postponing realization must not extinguish a federal tax obligation that otherwise applies. Congress can then separately determine the progressive rates for realized capital gains, gifts, and estates.
That formulation also gives your proposed Progressive Domestic Policy Program a much firmer constitutional foundation than an outright wealth-confiscation or punitive expatriation proposal would have. And, importantly, the basic machinery is not wholly novel: §§ 877A and 2801 already demonstrate Congress's use of expatriation-specific tax rules, while the Supreme Court precedents on realized income, progressive taxation, gift taxation, and succession taxation provide separate foundations for the components.
When you write the plank itself, I would keep those two ideas visibly separate: (1) progressive taxation of enormous accumulations and transfers of wealth; (2) an anti-evasion rule ensuring that expatriation cannot defeat those taxes. That makes both the policy logic and the constitutional argument considerably cleaner.
“OF COURSE, WHAT YOU HAVE COME UP WITH IS ESPECIALLY RELEVANT TO THE U.S. CONSTITUTION AND LAWS, BUT WOULDN’T IT ALSO BE FEASIBLE, WITH ADJUSTMENTS, FOR SWEDEN AND OTHER COUNTRIES?”
Yes. The underlying principle is portable to Sweden and most other countries, although the legal engineering would differ. In fact, exit taxation is already international practice: an OECD survey found that 14 OECD countries levy exit taxes on unrealized capital gains when individuals change tax residence, including Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, Australia and others.
What we developed for the United States can therefore be generalized into a principle that does not depend on the U.S. Constitution:
Changing one's residence or citizenship, or transferring one's assets abroad, should not extinguish tax liabilities attributable to income, gains, gifts, inheritances, or other taxable events arising while the taxpayer or property was within the country's taxing jurisdiction.
The particularly strong version would contain the same basic elements we discussed for America: progressive taxation of realized capital gains; substantial gift and inheritance/estate taxation so that holding rather than selling doesn't provide an escape; an accounting of accrued gains when tax residence terminates; continued taxation of the pre-departure portion when those gains are eventually realized; anti-avoidance provisions covering trusts, foundations, controlled companies and related persons; and, where collection is deferred, security sufficient to ensure eventual payment.
The OECD reports that existing systems already contain many of these devices. Some countries determine the gain when residence terminates but permit payment to be postponed until actual realization; Australia, Canada, Denmark and Israel are examples. Other systems tax only appreciation accumulated while the person was resident.
Sweden is actually a particularly interesting case
Sweden could enact much of this, but it faces a constraint the United States doesn't have: EU law.
A Swedish law cannot simply say, in effect:
"If a billionaire moves from Stockholm to Paris, we punish him financially for exercising his EU right of free movement."
The Court of Justice of the European Union has struck down exit-tax arrangements where immediate collection upon emigration imposed an unjustified or disproportionate disadvantage on someone exercising EU/EEA free-movement rights.
But that does not mean Sweden must surrender its claim to gains accumulated within Swedish taxing jurisdiction.
That distinction is crucial.
Sweden could instead establish the billionaire's accrued Swedish-period gain upon departure and preserve Sweden's right to tax that portion when realization occurs. If Sweden provides appropriate deferral rather than imposing a discriminatory financial punishment merely for moving elsewhere in the EU, its position becomes considerably stronger under EU law. Existing European exit taxes demonstrate that exit taxation itself is entirely compatible with the European legal order if appropriately designed.
Indeed, the OECD specifically lists Sweden itself among countries having exit-tax provisions applicable to financial assets.
So take your original example of Martin Lorentzon. A much stronger Swedish system could effectively say:
You are perfectly free to move to Switzerland, Monaco, Britain, the United States, or another EU country. But moving does not magically transform SEK 100 billion of appreciation accumulated while you were subject to Swedish taxation into SEK 100 billion upon which Sweden has relinquished every claim.
That is fundamentally different from preventing Lorentzon from leaving.
And there is an important advantage to making this an international Progressive policy
I would actually formulate your plank more broadly than we did when discussing the United States.
The general principle could be:
No person's lawful tax liability should be reduced or extinguished merely because that person changes residence or citizenship, transfers property abroad, or places property under the nominal ownership of a foreign trust, corporation, foundation, intermediary, or related person.
Then each country implements that principle through whatever constitutional machinery it possesses.
For the United States, realized-income, capital-gains, gift and estate taxation are particularly attractive because of the Constitution and Supreme Court precedents we discussed.
For Sweden and EU countries, the principal additional problem is EU free movement, so legislation should avoid imposing a special punishment for moving and instead preserve ordinary taxation of domestically accrued economic gains, with appropriate deferral. EU law itself recognizes that member states retain substantial direct-tax authority, although they must exercise it consistently with EU freedoms.
For countries outside the EU, constitutional property protections, tax treaties, residence rules and domestic constitutional provisions would determine the precise design.
And there is a powerful practical reason for doing this internationally. If several major economies adopted approximately the same principle, tax competition through billionaire flight becomes much less effective. The question ceases to be "Which country will let me escape the tax by moving there?" because the country being left has already preserved its claim to the gains accumulated during the taxpayer's period there.
I therefore think the idea you've arrived at is broader than an American policy proposal. The American version is one national implementation of a general anti-tax-flight principle. The United States happens to offer unusually powerful tools because citizenship-based taxation and §877A already exist; Sweden needs greater accommodation of EU free-movement law; other countries require their own adaptations.
And one feature should probably remain constant everywhere: do not make emigration the offense. Make emigration incapable of erasing the tax. That is simultaneously the cleaner legal principle and the harder system to evade.
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MY COMMENTS:
Progressivism does not have to produce capital flight. Progressivism is patriotism. Efforts against it are treachery — they weaken a nation and must be understood for what they are and addressed accordingly.
Please contact your legislators, send this to them, and ask whether they will draft it into legislation or else will explain to you why not.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
