[drblast]

Inflation is a wealth tax.

It's not necessary for the government to ever tax anyone for anything; they could just print the money and all "taxes" would come in the form of inflation instead. And that tax would be simple and unavoidable.

A very progressive tax system could be "print money and give it to everyone equally." If you're poor the guaranteed income would be a huge percentage of your wealth and since you have no savings the resulting inflation would affect you least. The wealthy with savings would essentially be taxed like you describe at the inflation rate.

This is a thought experiment rather than a suggestion for a workable system, but I think like the "ideal op-amp" it might be useful to compare tax systems to this one.

[gghhzzgghhzz]

not completely true that they could just print the money and demand no tax. Without demanding tax payable in the government's currency then nobody would have any reason to use that currency and the currency would have no value.

[fulafel]

To be equivalent to a wealth tax, it would need to affect all assets, not just money.