A New Supreme Court Case Could Make It Even Harder To Tax The Superrich

The Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case designed to preemptively block a wealth tax — another potentially lucrative gift for the conservative justices’ billionaire benefactors.

By Andrew Perez, Julia Rock, Rebecca Burns, Jacobin

The Supreme Court just agreed to hear a case next term that could preempt Congress and the Biden administration from instituting a federal wealth tax — another potentially lucrative gift for conservative justices’ billionaire benefactors and the superrich. A think tank affiliated with some of those benefactors recently pressed the court to accept the case and outlaw such taxes.

Days after the high court accepted the case, President Joe Biden reiterated his opposition to progressives’ demand that he add justices to the panel, which has a 6-3 conservative supermajority.

“If we start the process of trying to expand the court, we’re going to politicize it — maybe forever — in a way that is not healthy, that you can’t get back,” he declared.

The new case, Moore v. United States, is tailored to try to block Democrats’ promised agenda by defining what can — and cannot — count as taxable “income” under the Constitution. It specifically challenges a onetime levy on some shareholders for their foreign corporate earnings that was included in the 2017 Republican tax law.

The plaintiffs are a Washington state couple who faced a $15,000 tax bill under that provision for a stake they owned in an Indian company. They argue that their corporate earnings should not count as taxable income under the Constitution because they had not been distributed to shareholders as dividends.