Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax could have slashed billionaires' fortunes

The top 15 richest Americans could have seen their net worth decline by more than half — hundreds of billions of dollars — had Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax plan been in place since 1982, Bloomberg reports.

Why it matters: A new paper by two French economists, Berkeley professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who helped Warren devise the proposed tax, shows how a wealth tax of "just a few percentage points might erode fortunes over time and presumably reduce wealth inequality."

• Warren's tax plan proposes an annual 2% tax on assets above a taxpayer's first $50 million, and 3% on assets that exceed $1 billion.

Worth noting: The model doesn't take into account steps that the ultra-wealthy might have taken to lessen their exposure to the tax, including increased charitable giving.

Go deeper:

• Elizabeth Warren on the issues, in under 500 words
• Elizabeth Warren: What to know about the 2020 candidate's wealth tax proposal