Could U.S. states test a wealth tax? There has been some debate in the Democratic Party on the subject of a federal wealth tax. I know that there is some debate about the constitutionality of a wealth tax, but for the purpose of this question, I would either assume that the wealth tax is constitutional or that the states were enacting this law to test its constitutionality. U.S. News &amp; World Report states that 40% of billionaires in the United States live in either New York or California, where Silicon Valley and Wall Street bind many of the extremely rich to the businesses that made them so wealthy. Obviously, the biggest problem for a state like California trying to extract revenue from its uber-wealthy populace would be that they would simply move their residence and use any other possible legal loophole to avoid having to pay. At the same time, many of these billionaires built their wealth out of business empires that are firmly established in those states, like Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. The process of moving a business of that size and cultural significance would be immeasurably expensive because those firms rely on an elite talent pool that is very locale-centric for their recruiting, and they have employees that could choose to leave the company rather than relocate.
The Validity of State Wealth Taxes Yes. States can impose wealth taxes, although this doesn't clarify the validity of a federal wealth tax. States have broader taxing power than the federal government in terms of kinds of taxes that they may constitutionally impose. A state may impose any tax (1) that does not unduly discriminate against a federally protected constitutional civil liberty (like freedom of the press), (2) that does not purport to tax the federal government (arguably any other sovereign) without its consent, (3) that does not unduly discriminate against interstate commerce, and (4) that has some rational basis. Apart from these specific limitations and (5) any found in state law or the state's constitution, (6) a state's taxing power is plenary as to conduct or activity or property that has a sufficient connection to the state to provide it with jurisdiction. A recent U.S. Supreme Court case repealed some clear rules of the road regarding what states do not have the jurisdiction to tax, effectively increasing state tax jurisdiction considerably, for example, to impose sales taxes on Internet retailers. the biggest problem for a state like California trying to extract revenue from its uber-wealthy populace would be that they would simply move their residence and use any other possible legal loophole to avoid having to pay. This is true. The primary question regarding the validity of a state wealth tax would not be whether a state could impose a wealth tax, but what assets could a state make subject to its state wealth tax. This might be easy to answer in the case of real property, but hard in the case of intangible property or property held via entities. Federal statutes may, however, establish which states have jurisdiction to tax which assets with a state wealth tax as part of the power to regulate interstate commerce, or by ratifying a compact reached between multiple states which have state wealth taxes. Still the facts that many countries in the European Union impose or have historically imposed wealth taxes that generate significant tax revenue, despite the easy ability to the affluent to relocated to other countries in the E.U. that is closely analogous to that of U.S. states seeking to do the same thing, suggest that this is not an insurmountable task, even if there might be some leakage of untaxed wealth at the margins. The Validity of Federal Wealth Taxes In contrast, Congress may only impose taxes expressly authorized by some provision of the U.S. Constitution as amended. The applicable case law on the issue of the constitutionality of a federal wealth tax is not entirely settled. The gift, estate and generation skipping transfer tax system has been held to be constitutional, but since this is a tax imposed on transfers of wealth, it is arguably a tax in lieu of an income tax treated separately for ease of administration (since gifts and inheritances are within the core definition of income in the Internal Revenue Code at Section 63, but then specifically exempted from income taxation in lieu of donative transfer taxes like the gift and estate tax, in a separate statutory Section 102 of the Internal Revenue Code.). Federal property taxes in areas not in exclusively federal jurisdiction (e.g. Virginia rather than the U.S. Virgin Islands) were briefly in force in the 1700s, but were repealed before they could be subject to a constitutional challenge. Income taxes, even at 90% marginal tax rates, have been upheld as valid. The analysis and doctrines involved are rather involved for a short answer in this forum, and I am fairly certain that there is published legal scholarship arguing both sides of this question of first impression. In a nutshell, a federal tax must either be an income tax; tax imposed on states rather than individuals on a per capita basis; or an excise tax or duty or tariff. The first two types of taxes are comparatively well defined. The third is the subject of thin, mushy and somewhat inconsistent or indeterminate case law. One could argue, for example, that a wealth tax is really a form of income tax on imputed income from assets that could generate additional value to the owner even if the value that arises from this ownership is not monetized or realized. This argument would be particularly strong if wealth taxes paid with respect to an asset were allowed as a tax credit against taxes imposed on income generated by that same asset, in a manner similar to the foreign tax credit today. A wealth tax clearly isn't a per capita tax on a state government. No such tax has ever been imposed for any meaningful amount of time and has never been a more than nominal source of federal revenues if it has ever generated any federal revenues. There is also a credible argument that a wealth tax is a constitutionally valid excise tax or duty or tariff, focusing on the excise tax component, which is quite ill defined, because the courts have tended to side with the government on issues of the scope of the federal power to tax except in the clearest and most blatant cases of violations of the federal power to tax.
The location of your residence entrance is irrelevant for the law, what matters most is your "street address", i.e. mailing address. That is the address (therefore city) that you use for voter registration, and basically how you identify "where I live". If you lives 5 miles out in the country in an unincorporated area, you'd still use Needles (e.g.) as you mailing address: but you would not be able to vote for a mayor of Needles, just based on your mailing address. Both municipalities might claim jurisdiction based on the physical location of the property, especially for matters of building code. It should not be possible for both municipalities to tax the full value of your property, but they could split the assessment proportionally. The cities themselves are not collecting the tax, the county is (though property straddling a county line raises an interesting question).
Before the election, can a lawsuit prevent the amendment question from being put on the ballot? No. Generally speaking, the constitutionality of an otherwise procedurally proper ballot initiative is not ruled upon until after it has passed (eliminating the need to rule unnecessarily on the constitutionality of failed initiatives). Of course, if someone tried to put it in the ballot when the existing law conditions for putting it on the ballot were not met (e.g. because a deadline for doing so wasn't met) that could be challenged in court by a party with standing to do so. If passed into the constitution, would a court still have the ability to rule the restrictions unconstitutional? Probably not. The constitution as newly adopted doesn't sound like it would forbid doing that. This seems to be the whole point of the constitutional amendment in the first place and it the amendment to the constition is approved, that requirement is gone.
The information in telephone books is public. so are postal change-of-address records. So are records of the ownership of real estate. So are vital statistics such as birth records. So are voter registration lists -- i myself purchased a voter registration list (in digital form) for a municipality which showed people's names, addresses, and the years when they voted, when I was a political candidate for local office in NJ. It cost about $100. I believe that many states also make driver's license information available for a fee to marketers. Credit records are available for certain limited purposes, also. No doubt there are other public sources I haven't thought of. If such a site relies on public records, or other publicly available data, it is not illegal. Many such sites offer to remove names on an opt-out basis, but there is no legal requirement that sites do so. This kind of information is not considered nto be "private facts" under US tort law. Aside from opting out, if the sites provide that option, I don't think you have any recourse. One could ask the local legislature to pass a law prohibiting such sites, or making them require consent, similar to the GDPR that the EU has. But I don't know of any such law in the US to date.
There are a number of areas in which the US states can pass laws only to the extend that they do not conflict with Federal laws passed by Congress. When a federal law clearly says that states may not pass laws on a given subject, the issue is clear. When it specifically invites state laws, the issue is also clear. But when a Federal law imposes certain regulations in a given area, it may not be clear if a state may go beyond the Federal requirements. Sometimes it can. For example, there is a Federal Minimum Wage. But states are free to impose higher minimum wage levels, and some have done so. So when a court decision or legal article says &quot;Congress having occupied the field&quot; it means that a set of Federal laws is intended to be a compelte regulation of a given area, and states may not add additional regulations of their own in that area. I am not sure what rules apply to disclosure of information by the Capitol police.
The 9th Circuit decision actually held that the challenged regulations constitute a prior restraint on speech that offends the First Amendment which is not the same as saying that computer software is speech. A crucial differentiation is that by prohibiting talking about the technology, the regulations imposed a &quot;prepublication licensing scheme that burdens scientific expression&quot;, which distinguishes the TikTok case from talking about cryptography. The regulations burden business transactions, which have for a long time not been protected by strict scrutiny. The first hill one would have to climb would be showing that there is a real First Amendment issue. There is no First Amendment right for the Chinese government to spy on Americans. The second issue is whether narrow tailoring means that if someone can come up with an alternative to an outright ban, then the regulation is not narrowly-enough tailored. We may eventually get a clearer guideline on that, since state governments have imposed very many restrictions on constitutional liberties, in order to prevent the spread of covid, when a less restrictive action would be warning people that this is a dangerous disease. Many restrictions have survived strict scrutiny because they were believed to be necessary to achieve that governmental end. The executive order identifies the compelling government interest: TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage. In light of that, it is hard to see that a warning notice would be effective in the face of this threat. Seizing the company and its IP and handing it over to Microsoft would be a less restrictive measure that would probably be as effective and would be protective of the First Amendment rights of teenagers, but it would also be somewhat outside the scope of current US law, so it isn't an actual alternative. I conclude that the ban is the least restrictive effective response to the threat. But it is not entirely clear what the constitutional rules are regarding effectiveness of alternatives (does 20% less restrictive compel a 10% less effective solution?).
On the first page of https://www.gov.uk/duty-free-goods/overview you find: "You can bring some goods from abroad without having to pay UK tax or ‘duty’ (customs charges), as long as they’re for your own use." And on the next page "... will use them yourself or give them away as a gift". This clearly doesn't cover anything that you bring into the UK to sell it. And a bit further on the site it says "You must tell customs (known as ‘declaring’) on arrival in the UK if you have goods: ... that you plan to sell". Since you are asking here, it is quite obvious that you intend to sell :-) You said "e.g. say this guys comes every month from Russia to France for unrelated business, each time he fills up his luggage with the maximum allowed amount of goods that comply with custom laws". If this guy sells the stuff to you, then the maximum allowed amount of goods to import without paying taxes is zero. Once he is willing to pay taxes, there is no limit. Obviously regularly importing things from Russia or France and selling in the UK at a profit means that he is running a business in the UK, which means he would have to register a business, pay corporation taxes etc. It's all a matter of degree; for small amounts nobody cares (up to some limit you don't need to register a business or pay taxes; I don't know the details).
The legal question is whether a tax (state or federal) constitutes a &quot;taking&quot; for purposes of the 5th Amendment eminent domain clause. The Courts have always held that a generally applicable tax does not constitute a taking, so the income tax is not a taking. The Court came to this conclusion because the 5th Amendment takings clause was always understood to refer to government exercise of the power of eminent domain, rather than generally applicable taxes or regulations, even though they might have a negative economic effect on someone by causing their property to be taken for public use or by making their property less valuable. The exclusion of taxes from 5th Amendment takings predates the 16th Amendment. There have always been taxes and taxes are always collected for public use. The direct/indirect tax distinction arises not under the 5th Amendment, but under Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution and governs what kinds of taxes Congress is authorized to impose. This has nothing to do with the 5th Amendment.