This week, Assaf Harpaz (Georgia; Google Scholar) reviews a new work by David Gamage (Missouri; Google Scholar) and Goldburn Maynard Jr. (Connecticut; Google Scholar), Confronting the Tax-and-Oligarchy Catch-22, U. Ill. L. Rev. (forthcoming).

Taxes on wealth are among the most widely debated tax policies in the U.S. and abroad, frequently invoked by policymakers as a response to wealth and income inequality. A notable example is California’s recently proposed Billionaire Tax Act (Initiative No. 25-0024), which would levy a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California residents with over $1 billion in assets, with proceeds dedicated to healthcare and education. Professor Gamage has been involved in designing the proposal, as well as Senator Elizabeth Warren’s “Ultra-Millionaire” wealth tax in her 2020 presidential campaign. Moreover, Professor Maynard has written extensively at the intersection of wealth taxation and economic inequality.

In Confronting the Tax-and-Oligarchy Catch-22, the authors inquire why taxes on wealth concentration have lacked political traction in recent decades, despite majority support in public opinion polls. The article argues that while taxing wealth is among democracy’s most direct tools for constraining oligarchic power, extreme wealth also finances the political work of blocking those same wealth taxes, mostly enabled through tax deferral. The authors label this phenomenon as the “tax-and-oligarchy catch 22.” In response, the authors suggest a “democratic tax firewall”: shifting the focus to long-term resilience against wealth defense through a combination of design choices that can help lawmakers prevent the erosion of wealth tax reform.

The article begins by highlighting the high levels of wealth inequality in the United States. By the end of 2024, the bottom half of households held about $4 trillion in combined net worth, whereas the wealthiest 0.1% held $22.5 trillion. While those assets continue to appreciate, there is often no realization event (sale or other disposition) that triggers taxable income. In fact, wealthy taxpayers can hold onto their assets until death and pass them to their heirs, who would generally benefit from a step-up in basis to the assets’ fair market value. The ability to indefinitely defer tax enables the wealthiest taxpayers to retain political capacity, including the ability to fund campaigns, support lobbying, sustain litigation, and produce expert opinions that would sideline unfavorable reforms. Political scientists consistently find that public policy favors wealthy constituents and that the rich have an outsized influence in areas like monetary policy, taxation, and international trade. The authors contend that both the market and political systems create undesirable outcomes skewed towards what they consider and define as an American “oligarchy,” ultimately weakening the government’s responsiveness to ordinary citizens.

The article then examines periods when reformers were able to successfully constrain concentrated wealth, aiming to draw lessons for contemporary tax policy design. The authors focus primarily on two periods. First, the Progressive Era (approximately 1890–1920) demonstrated that sustained and broad-based organizing can overcome concentrated financial opposition. This period also overlapped with World War I, which cemented calls for the wealthy to sacrifice on behalf of the nation, as the income tax moved away from being an anti-oligarchy tax to a tax on the affluent. Second, the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency (1933–1945), which introduced the New Deal and overlapped with World War II, made efforts to tax concentrated wealth by significantly increasing income tax rates. At the same time, however, the Revenue Act of 1940 famously broadened the tax base and moved the income tax “from a class tax to a mass tax.” The authors acknowledge that while crises provide a useful opportunity to grab public attention, anti-oligarch tax victories require resources, time, and sustained effort. In practice, this means that reformers must be ready with shelf-ready designs and move quickly with workable and politically defensible proposals when windows of opportunity open.

The article then sets forth the central response to the “tax-and-oligarchy catch 22”: a democratic tax firewall that comprises a set of bases, timing rules, and enforcement infrastructures designed to constrain the channels through which wealth converts into durable political power, mainly prioritizing long-term durability. The description of the firewall is detailed and robust. The authors normatively justify this firewall on grounds of democratic hazard, state-implicated advantage, and co-created rents, identifying three core levers and criteria for prioritizing them. Under the first lever, business profits would be taxed more heavily, especially when these profits reflect persistent market dominance or legal privilege (“rents”). The second lever relates to the timing of income tax recognition and assessment, built around realization. The authors suggest that a tax system moving closer to the current assessment of tax gains as they accrue, rather than waiting for realization, reduces political optionality. At this point, the authors may wish to briefly discuss the constitutional barriers to overcoming realization, from Eisner v. Macomber to Moore, to the extent they view assessment as replacing the realization requirement. Third, the authors convey that redesigning wealth-transfer taxation would ensure that fortunes face meaningful friction when passed across generations. The article proceeds to introduce other firewall design principles, such as design against drift and erosion.

The article concludes by considering the politics of enacting and sustaining the firewall. Recognizing likely resistance, the authors note that the same oligarchic patterns that motivate a firewall may also impede its enactment and sustainment. In other words, the firewall may itself be vulnerable to the “tax-and-oligarchy catch 22.” The authors advocate for reforms that are legible to voters, defensible in court, and difficult to hollow out, offering the California Billionaire Tax Act as a useful case study.

This outstanding project makes an important and timely contribution, building on the authors’ substantial body of work on the taxation of concentrated wealth. It offers a normatively grounded framework and a practical pathway for introducing durable reforms. The authors might also consider incorporating a comparative law perspective: how have wealth taxes in other jurisdictions (e.g., Norway and Spain) been implemented, and can those lessons inform the U.S. experience? Relatedly, have any “firewalls” been designed in those systems to mitigate oligarchic resistance, and if so, how?

The article’s thoroughness and strong analytical foundation enable readers to conceptualize past, present, and prospective proposals for taxing concentrated wealth. In this context, it will be especially interesting to monitor ongoing state-level initiatives, such as the California Billionaire Tax Act, should it appear on the November 2026 ballot.

Here is the rest of this week’s SSRN Tax Roundup:

Md Arif Ansari (National Law University Delhi), The Sovereignty Paradox: Digital Services Taxes, Political Jurisprudence and the Limits of State Power in the Digital Economy (Mar. 19, 2026)

Amanda Borwegen (Sidley Austin LLP) & Ajay K. Mehrotra (Northwestern), The Beginnings of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Placing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in Historical Perspective, 111 Cornell Law Review Online 1 (2026)

Caroline Bruckner (American University, Kogod School of Business) & Collin Coil (American University, Department of Mathematics & Statistics), Overlooked and Undervalued: An Investigation of Women Business Owners and Congressional Tax Hearings (Mar. 16, 2026)

David Gamage (Missouri), Brian D. Galle (UC Berkeley), Emmanuel Saez (UC Berkeley) & Darien Shanske (UC Davis), Response to “The Net Present Value of the Billionaire Tax Act”, University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2026-31 (Mar. 19, 2026)

Tarun Jain (Supreme Court of India), Unveiling Indian Customs Law Framework for Effectuating Free Trade Agreements (Mar. 12, 2026)

Dhruv Janssen-Sanghavi (Maastricht University, Faculty of Law), Tiger Global Suffers from Constitutional Infirmities: Response to the ASG (Mar. 12, 2026)

Phoebe Leach (Georgetown), Taxed from Home: How Post-Pandemic Remote Work Magnifies the Constitutional Issues with Taxing Telecommuters (Mar. 19, 2026)

Peter Molk (Florida), Short-Termism and Long-Termism Across Enterprise (Mar. 17, 2026)

Noam Noked (CUHK Law), Young Ran (Christine) Kim (Cardozo Law) & Reuven S. Avi-Yonah (Michigan Law), How the U.S. Constitution Shapes International Tax Law: Instrument Choice in Tax Agreements (Mar. 17, 2026)

Katherine Pratt (Loyola LA), A Primer on Personal Casualty Loss Tax Deduction Rules for Victims of the January 2025 California Fires (Mar. 19, 2026)

Maciej Ślifirczyk (Independent), Consequences of the Impossibility of Fulfilling Tax Obligations (Mar. 19, 2026)

Shailendra Uprety & Srijana Adhikari (Independent), Will the Apex Court Entertain All Your Tax Cases?, 31 Nepal Law Review 510 (2026) (Mar. 17, 2026)