This paper analyses the relative merits of wealth and capital income taxes as instruments for taxing the rich. The main rationale for a wealth tax is to address the incompleteness of the tax code in taxing unrealized capital gains, which can be enormous and concentrated among the wealthy. However, by taxing presumed rather than actual returns, a wealth tax fails to address inequality among taxpayers with the same wealth but different capital incomes. In addition, wealth taxation creates liquidity problems that may adversely affect growth firms and start-ups, which is why wealth taxes typically provide exemptions and deductions for certain business assets. Our empirical analysis, based on Swedish register data, describes the wealth composition of the wealthiest and assesses the distributional incidence of different combinations of wealth and capital income taxation.

中文翻译：

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对富人征税：财富税和资本所得税之间的选择

本文分析了财富税和资本所得税作为对富人征税的工具的相对优点。征收财富税的主要理由是解决税法对未实现资本收益征税的不完整性问题，这些资本收益可能巨大且集中在富人身上。然而，通过对假定回报而非实际回报征税，财富税无法解决财富相同但资本收入不同的纳税人之间的不平等问题。此外，财富税会造成流动性问题，可能对成长型企业和初创企业产生不利影响，这就是为什么财富税通常为某些企业资产提供免税和扣除的原因。我们的实证分析基于瑞典登记数据，