Justices could rule out wealth tax

Rich conservative donors back plaintiffs in dispute

yers. Andrew Grossman, the Moores’ lead attorney, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The omissions, along with the Moores’ failure to take advantage of other legal options that would have deferred, if not eliminated, their tax liability make Avi-Yonah and other experts in international tax law suspect the case was manufactured to get at a larger issue, the tax on billionaires that has been proposed by some prominent Democrats but never enacted.

A wealth tax would apply not to the incomes of the very richest Americans, but their assets, such as stock holdings, that now only get taxed when they are sold.

“There really was no reason for the court to take it on, other than to send a signal to warn off the Congress from passing a billionaire tax,” said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the UrbanBrookings Tax Policy Center.

Other provisions of the tax code could be upended by the court’s decision, including measures relating to partnerships, limited liability companies and other business formations, Rosenthal said.

Changes to those provisions also could affect some justices’ finances.

Chief Justice John Roberts holds a one-eighth interest worth up to $15,000 in an Irish partnership that owns a cottage in county Limerick, Ireland, and Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni, owns a limited liability company that generated between $50,000 and $100,000 in income last year from Nebraska real estate, according to the justices’ financial disclosure forms.

Two other recent Supreme Court cases advanced by conservative interests also raised questions about whether facts had been manipulated to get the disputes in front of the court. One of those involved a wedding website designer in Colorado who did not want to work with same-sex couples and a public high school football coach in Washington who wanted to pray on the field.

Rosenthal said that “the ugly facts matter” and that the justices could return the Moores’ case to a lower court without ruling on it.

Charles and Kathleen Moore are the public face of a Supreme Court case backed by business and conservative political interests that could call into question parts of the U.S. tax code and rule out a much-discussed but never-enacted tax on wealth.