U.S. Government shuts down.

[Jester]

A simplistic example, but one worth recalling as the estimations of cost, value, and worth are tossed about in such discussions.

I'm with you that market value is true value, and that it's no use screaming that your used car "is" worth 7k when you can only get 5k.

However, a wealth tax is just going to be a bill applied to the nominal amount of one's wealth. While that has all sorts of tricky accounting snags, and of course the basic problems of fraud and offshoring, no actual assets need be sold.

I am reminded of a paper I saw recently, describing how the King of France got his venal officeholders to value their (purchased) offices for tax purposes. He told them to come up with their own values. If they claimed a number too high, they'd pay extra taxes, and if they claimed a number that was too low, the king would exercise his option to buy it back from them and re-sell it.

Surely this is not a solution for today, but maybe there's something in that direction that could be done to force accurate reporting.

-Jester