[oldbrowser]

Wealth includes many things that are very difficult to value. copyrights, patents, formulas, mineral rights, property rights, goodwill, R&D, unrealized capital gains, etc. All of these items would have to be correctly priced annually to do taxes. Who would do the subjective pricing?
The only way to objectively value intangibles would be when they are converted to cash, which is the reason for income tax.

[piytar]

Wealth includes many things that are very difficult to value. copyrights, patents, formulas, mineral rights, property rights, goodwill, R&D, unrealized capital gains, etc. All of these items would have to be correctly priced annually to do taxes.

And of course the politicians and their backers would use that to game the system. So we'd end up right back where we are at. Oh well.