The Supreme Court’s decision on taxing offshore earnings could have been an indirect, though significant, move in the fight over wealth taxes — but it didn’t turn out that way.

The justices decided Thursday not to wade into the legality of taxing a household’s paper gains, emphasizing that their 7-2 decision was narrow and confined only to the provisions of the 2017 tax cuts at issue.

Both supporters and detractors of a wealth tax painted the decision as a glancing win for their side.

he Supreme Court declined to overturn a tax policy Thursday that critics warned could have had broad implications on federal tax policy and the U.S. economy, ruling against a couple who claimed they should not have been taxed on money they invested but hadn't made a profit on.

It’s difficult to concisely summarize the Supreme Court’s Thursday decision in Moore v. United States, which rejects a challenge to a one-time federal tax targeting some investors in foreign corporations. But the bottom line is that Moore is bad news for anyone hoping that the Supreme Court would launch a comprehensive attack on the federal government’s ability to raise taxes. 

Nevertheless, the decision is still excellent news for billionaires.

The IRS estimates it will raise more than $50 billion over the next decade by closing a loophole often exploited by wealthy filers seeking to avoid paying taxes.

The loophole allows such taxpayers, as well as businesses, to move assets between entities in a way that authorities say has no economic purpose. Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo called the practice “really just a shell game" in a statement.

President Biden unveiled his election-year budget pitch Monday, calling for $5.5 trillion in tax increases by raising rates on the wealthy and corporations — while spending $7.3 trillion on defense, federal benefit programs, affordable housing and student debt cancellation, among other proposals.

President Joe Biden's proposed 2025 budget includes some perks for millions of families and low-income workers as well as senior citizens, including reviving a program that lifted millions of children out of poverty during the pandemic.

U.S. President Joe Biden sketched his policy vision for a potential second four-year term on Monday, unveiling a $7.3 trillion election-year budget aimed at convincing skeptical Americans that he can run the economy better than Donald Trump.

Biden wants to raise taxes by trillions on corporations and high earners, his budget wish-list showed, to help cut the deficit and pay for new programs assisting those who make less cope with high housing and childcare costs. Congress is unlikely to adopt the measures as proposed.

The Supreme Court will soon hear a lawsuit that seeks to kill a leading proposal to reduce wealth inequality in the United States, even before that proposal becomes reality.

During her 2020 presidential campaign, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) proposed a 2 percent wealth tax on Americans worth over $50 million. The idea was that, rather than merely taxing very wealthy people’s income and leaving their accumulated capital intact, the new tax would gradually chip away at massive fortunes and start to bring wealth inequality under control.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to reject a challenge to the constitutionality of a provision of a 2017 corporate tax reform law that taxes the undistributed profits from U.S. shares of foreign corporations that are majority American owned.

You almost have to admire the big-government legal lobby. Sensing a threat to their designs for a wealth tax, they turned the runup to the Supreme Court’s Tuesday oral arguments in Moore v. U.S. into tax Armageddon.

“Supreme Court Will Hear Case That Could Upend The Current Tax System,” headlined Forbes. The Washington Post called it “the Supreme Court tax case that could blow a hole in the federal budget,” as if Congress hasn’t already done that. Even former House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed the panic button, but he’s been led astray.