WSJ: Democrats’ Emerging Tax Idea: Look Beyond Income, Target Wealth. “Lawmakers and 2020 candidates offer a range of options focused on capturing some of the trillions of dollars in assets belonging to the nation’s richest.”

For the richest Americans, Democrats want to shift toward taxing their wealth, instead of just their salaries and the income their assets generate. The personal income tax indirectly touches wealth, but only when assets are sold and become income.

At the end of 2017, U.S. households had $3.8 trillion in unrealized gains in stocks and investment funds, plus more in real estate, private businesses and artwork, according to the Economic Innovation Group, a nonprofit focused on bringing investment to low-income areas. Most of the value of estates over $100 million consists of unrealized gains, said a 2013 Federal Reserve study. Much has never been touched by individual income taxes and may never be.

Democrats are eager to tap that mountain of wealth to finance priorities such as expanding health-insurance coverage, combating climate change and aiding low-income households. Their ideas range from new rules on inherited assets, to a plan by Sen. Ron Wyden for annual taxes on unrealized gains, to a proposal from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to tax wealth itself.

A century ago, progressives promised the income tax would only affect the top one percent, too.