If you tax assets like land, shares, buildings, mines, vehicles, bank accounts, gold, etc, then evasion is not possible and the useless wealthy that inherited (rather than created) the assets will start paying tax.
I suspect much of that's going to be in intermediate or structured classes, to wit: corporate structures. Not merely land / building / plant / stock, but corporate entities themselves.
But seeing that spelled out might suggest the feasibility of your suggestion. It is interesting.
Don’t quote me on this, but as far as I am aware the major asset class in the USA is land and improvements. Rather hard to hide either of these :)
Taxing assets more (and taxing production less) will result in few people holding onto assets that could be more productively used by others people. We want to get our limited resources into the hands of the people that can make the most of the assets.
My suggestion is tax the assets directly. Don’t tax their owner, just have the asset itself owe the tax. For example, if you have a building and land then $x dollars in tax are due each year by the land and building. You don’t then have to worry about who owns the asset or if the ultimate owner is on or offshore.
Of course proposing such a suggestion is a great way to have the shortest career in politics possible. The mega wealthy are fully aware that if this idea ever gained traction they would be history - good thing I never plan to run for office :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_tax_on_wealth
A purported merit is that it should desensitize to sit on real-estate assets. It also comes with the twist that you can get a rebate by investing in privately owned SMBs. Methinks that if you deploy that large scale you'd end up fueling tech-bubbles.
- any GST/HST credit or Canada Child Tax Benefit payments, as well as those from related provincial and territorial programs.
- child assistance payments and the supplement for handicapped children paid by the province of Quebec.
- most amounts received from a Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA)
- compensation received from a province or territory if you were a victim of a criminal act or a motor vehicle accident.
- lottery winnings.
- most gifts and inheritances.
- amounts paid by Canada or an ally (if the amount is not taxable in that country) for disability or death due to war service.
- most amounts received from a life insurance policy following someone’s death.
- most payments of the type commonly referred to as “strike pay” you received from your union, even if you perform picketing duties as a requirement of membership.
Barring those items, anything else you acquire including necessities like food, medicine, clothing, and shelter all have taxes on them. Some will argue that this is not a direct tax on assets, but whether it's indirect or direct it's still the government taking more.