福布斯最近发布了2026年福布斯400强榜单：如今美国最富有的400人总财富达8万亿美元。埃隆·马斯克高居榜首，估计身价9080亿美元。如果你像我一样毕生都在思考税收问题，这样一份名单自然会引发关于财富税的疑问。人们可能会认为，这份名单为征收财富税提供了论据。然而，如果你仔细推敲这些数字，实际上会发现支持财富税的一些论点有多么站不住脚。
Forbes recently dropped its 2026 Forbes 400 list: The 400 richest Americans today are worth a combined $8 trillion. Elon Musk, at the tip-top of the list, is worth an estimated $908 billion. If you spend your life thinking about taxes, as I do, a list like this naturally raises the wealth-tax question. One might think such a list would make an argument in favor of wealth taxation. If you think hard about the numbers, however, it actually shows how bad some arguments are in its favor.
支持财富税的论点主要有两个，屡见不鲜。一是政治权力：巨额财富可转化为对选举和公共政策的巨大影响力。削减亿万富翁的财富可能消除他们为政客提供资金的能力。另一个论点是税收：如果联邦政府巨额赤字的同时私人财富却巨大，为何不向这些财富征税？审视新数据有助于反驳这两大论点。
Two arguments for wealth taxes come up again and again. One is political power: Enormous fortunes can translate into enormous influence over elections and public policy. Defunding billionaires might eliminate their ability to bankroll politicians. The other argument is revenue: If the federal government is running huge deficits while private fortunes are huge, why not tax some of those fortunes? Examining new data helps rebut both arguments.
我采用了福布斯2016年和2026年榜单的财富估算值，计算了这些财富的年化增长率，并推算如果从2016年起每年征收10%的财富税，而在税前增长路径保持不变的情况下，会发生什么情况。10%是故意设定的极端税率，远高于美国大多数财富税提案。可将其视为一场财富压力测试——超级富豪的政治权力能否经受住甚至高于常规提案税率的考验？
I took wealth estimates from Forbes’s 2016 and 2026 lists, calculated the annualized growth in those fortunes, and asked what would have happened if a 10 percent wealth tax had been imposed every year starting in 2016 while the underlying pre-tax growth path stayed the same. Ten percent is deliberately extreme, much more than most U.S. wealth-tax proposals. Think of it as a wealth stress test — would the political power of the very wealthy withstand taxes at rates even higher than normally proposed?
以马斯克为例。在我的假设情境中，他的2026年财富从福布斯报道的9080亿美元降至我反事实10%财富税情境下的约3170亿美元（同样假设他过去10年的财富平稳增长）。这是一个巨大的缩减。然而，他仍拥有巨额财富。在同一测算下，他仍具备足够的财力完成如他所做的那样、斥资440亿美元收购推特，并斥资逾2.59亿美元支持唐纳德·特朗普2024年竞选，亦如他所做。
Take Musk. In my hypothetical example, his 2026 fortune falls from $908 billion reported by Forbes to about $317 billion in my counterfactual 10 percent wealth tax example (again, assuming his wealth over the past 10 years grew smoothly). That is an enormous reduction. Yet, he is still left with an enormous fortune. Under the same exercise, he would still have had plenty of financial capacity to complete the $44 billion purchase of Twitter, as he did, and to spend more than $259 million supporting Donald Trump’s 2024 election effort, as he did.
巨大的政治影响力并不需要9080亿美元，甚至不需要3170亿美元。过去十年征收10%的税几乎不会改变什么。同样的模式也出现在榜单顶端。征收10%年税十年后，杰夫·贝佐斯仍将拥有约1320亿美元，拉里·佩奇约970亿美元，迈克尔·戴尔约920亿美元。这些财富虽然大幅缩水，但仍属于足以赋予巨大政治权力的规模。仅需几千万美元就能买到惊人的影响力，即使在提议的财富税水平下，福布斯400强成员依然能轻松保留数千万美元。
Vast political influence does not require $908 billion, or even $317 billion. A 10 percent tax over the past decade would have changed little. The same pattern shows up across the top of the list. After 10 years of a 10 percent annual tax, Jeff Bezos still ends up around $132 billion, Larry Page around $97 billion, and Michael Dell around $92 billion. These are dramatically smaller fortunes, but they remain fortunes on a scale that allows for vast political power. Incredible influence can be bought for just a few tens of millions of dollars, and members of the Forbes 400 would still easily retain tens of millions of dollars even after the levels of wealth taxation that have been proposed.
再看收入论据。福布斯400强总财富约8万亿美元。国会预算办公室目前预计2026财年联邦赤字约2.1万亿美元。即使没收福布斯400强100%的财富，也仅相当于按该年率计算约3.8年的赤字。之后财富存量耗尽，而年度预算缺口将无限期持续。且无人提议征收100%财富税。经常性财富税当然会带来经常性收入，而非一次性没收所有财富。
Then there is the revenue argument. The entire Forbes 400 is worth about $8 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office currently estimates the fiscal 2026 federal deficit at about $2.1 trillion. Even confiscating 100 percent of every Forbes 400 fortune would equal only about 3.8 years of deficits at that annual rate. After that, the stock of wealth is gone, while the annual budget gap remains indefinitely. And no one is proposing 100 percent wealth taxation. A recurring wealth tax would, of course, raise recurring revenue rather than literally confiscate all wealth at once.
但这个比较很有用，因为它赤裸裸地揭示了问题的规模。福布斯400强令人惊叹地富有，但联邦政府的财政问题甚至更大。我们不能仅靠亿万富翁来解决预算问题。即使税收足以大幅削减顶级财富，也会让最富有的美国人保留巨大的财力，足以购买惊人的权力。而福布斯400强的总财富虽巨大，按当前速度仅相当于几年的联邦赤字。
But the comparison is useful because it lays bare the scale of the problem. The Forbes 400 are astonishingly rich, but the federal government’s fiscal problem is even bigger. We cannot solve our budgetary problems only on the backs of billionaires. Even a tax large enough to cut top fortunes dramatically can leave the richest Americans with vast financial capacity, enough to buy incredible power. And the combined wealth of the Forbes 400, enormous as it is, comes only to a few years’ worth of federal deficits at today’s pace.
福布斯400强榜单确实显示出惊人的财富掌握在少数美国人手中。但对这些财富征税无法解决我国的问题。
The Forbes 400 list does show an incredible amount of wealth in the hands of a select few Americans. But taxing that wealth will not solve our country's problems.
杰夫·胡普斯（Jeff Hoopes）是北卡罗来纳大学（University of North Carolina）的教授，同时担任该校税务研究中心（UNC Tax Center）的研究主任。他共同主持了一档名为《Tax Chats》的播客节目，是“税务基金会”（The Tax Foundation）的顾问委员会成员，并且还是“税务研究网络”（Tax Research Network）的联合创始人。
Jeff Hoopes is a professor at the University of North Carolina and the research director of the UNC Tax Center. He co-hosts a podcast called “Tax Chats,” is on the Advisory Council of The Tax Foundation and is a co-founder of the Tax Research Network.