Warren’s wealth tax would raise less than she claims — even using her economists’ own assumptions

Using their cited assumptions around avoidance and economic growth cuts revenue by a quarter

In January, Elizabeth Warren proposed a two percent (“two cent”) wealth tax on families worth $50 million or more, graduated to three percent for those worth $1 billion or more. Last Friday, she announced an additional three percent tax on billionaires as part of her Medicare for All plan.

Warren’s plans rely on revenue from this wealth tax. It’s how she would fund student debt cancellation, tuition-free public college, teacher pay hikes, subsidized child care, and now, part of single-payer healthcare.

Her campaign has cited a $2.75 trillion 10-year revenue estimate for her original two- to three-percent tax, and estimated that the three percent Medicare for All surtax on billionaires would raise another $1 trillion. These estimates come from UC Berkeley professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who produced them in three steps:

1. Assemble a consolidated wealth dataset from government surveys and Forbes
2. Calculate avoidance and evasion based on academic studies
3. Extrapolate over a decade based on government economic growth projections

Saez and Zucman have laudably made the data from Step 1 openly accessible. In Steps 2 and 3, however, they…