High Court's Moore Ruling Sharpens Wealth-Tax Debate

The US Supreme Court brought a muted end last week to its biggest tax case in years, but the arguments that propelled the case are far from over, especially about what the court’s ruling could mean for future attempts to enact a wealth tax.

The court voted 7-2 to uphold the mandatory repatriation tax, a one-time tax on past foreign corporate profits. Washington state residents Charles and Kathleen Moore had challenged the constitutionality of the tax, arguing that it had forced them to pay $14,729 in taxes on the profits of an Indian company in which they’d invested even though the company’s profits were never distributed to them.

But the case’s significance went far beyond the Moores. Many had feared that striking down the tax not only would lead to billions of dollars in refunds to giant multinational companies that were the tax’s primary targets, but also would call into question a host of other taxes based on similar legal principles.

The Supreme Court said the tax was constitutional, and stressed that its ruling was narrow, with any outside issues left for another time. But that left unanswered questions about what the ruling could mean for any future wealth tax. Many such proposals would tax wealthy people’s “unrealized” gains on investments—profits that haven’t actually been distributed or monetized—which was the same issue over which the Moores questioned the repatriation tax.

And while the court’s ruling was narrow and set aside the realization issue, at least four of the nine justices supported the idea that income should have to be realized before it could be taxed, a signal that any future wealth tax could have a hard time passing legal muster before the court.

This edition of Talking Tax has two interviews with two very different perspectives on the Moore ruling. Bloomberg Tax senior reporter Michael Rapoport spoke first with Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of the Tax Law Center at New York University’s law school, who wanted to see the tax upheld, and then with Andrew Grossman and Jeff Paravano, attorneys for BakerHostetler who represented the Moores and wanted to see the tax struck down.

Producer: Matthew S. Schwartz.

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