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Jared Halpern says the Supreme Court is at work but not for Trump yet
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So there was a provision in the 2017 tax law, those Trump-era tax cuts that basically required shareholders of U.S. businesses that are overseas to pay a one-time kind of remittance fee, remittance tax on their share of those profits. That was challenged as kind of being viewed as out of bounds because it's not realized income, right? It's kind of like a holding. The court said that that tax was allowed, but kind of want to step further in suggesting, listen, this is about this specific provision, it should not be read to mean anything about any hypothetical congressional action out there. Obviously, there are some provisions, some proposals in Congress that would look to tax things beyond just income for the super wealthy, looking to tax assets as well. That has not been done. Obviously, it would face a challenge, if it were. The thought was maybe the court would offer some guidance, in this opinion, to any of those kind of proposals out there. They went out of their way to make sure no, you're not going to do any of that. We're not weighing in on hypotheticals. Well, beside that, when it comes to... That's right, that's right. Yeah, and they also kind of threw it out there that we're not even sure if wealth tax is constitutional. Again, they didn't really take up anything. They said that that's not what this is. They kind of viewed this a little bit differently. Again, this was a very narrow ruling that dealt with this specific provision of that tax law. It would have undermined that tax law had they struck it down. This is one of the main revenue enhancers that every tax law needs. You have to balance out revenues when you cut taxes. This was one of those revenue enhancements to try and cut taxes elsewhere. Had this fallen, that source of revenue would have gone away. That would have really kind of disrupted the balance here of the tax law. Congress would have had to probably do something in response. When the Supreme Court made that decision yesterday to deny a challenge on this, that means it moves forward and our government can have that tax on... They've been collecting this since 2017. It's just the current law in place. Unrealized income from foreign investments. I'm iffy on taxing people on things that haven't been cashed out, if you will. If you've got a worth of so much and it's all tied up and it's not liquid, I don't think you tax on things that haven't been realized yet. I may untie that. But anyway, quickly on the Supreme Court's ruling, on the Trump-immune case opinion, that's coming any minute now, right? We'll see. There are opinions coming any minute now. At the top of the hour, we will get the next slate of opinions from the Supreme Court. There are still about 17-18 opinions left undecided that have been argued this term. We don't get a heads up on which opinions are ready to go. We know that they will have opinions next week as well. The court has kind of scheduled those days. And so now we just wait at the top of the hour and see what they come out with, right? One of those big ones certainly is this Trump immunity challenge, whether or not not just the case against him and Washington can move forward, but really a part of the law, a part of presidential powers that has never been explored by the Supreme Court. This is not a case just about Donald Trump. Right. This is a case about our understanding of the power of the presidency and checks and balances and kind of how that happens, right? There are certainly been warnings on both sides, right? If you don't have immunity, you would kind of run the risk of a lawless presidency. If you have immunity that goes too far, you could have presidents that are prosecuted for actions that were a mistake, like military strikes or something like that, right? And so I was in arguments that day and the justices across the political sort of spectrum, right? The ideological spectrum, I should say, were really kind of wrestling with that idea that they believe there probably is kind of a middle ground here. But what does that look like? Who decides what it is? What's an action that is kind of part of the presidency? What's behavior that falls outside the bounds of the presidency? That seems to be the line that they're trying to figure out. It'll be interesting to see kind of how narrow or how general an opinion ultimately is on that question. Again, it's a part of the presidency that has never really been explored by the U.S. Supreme Court before. Well, I don't think it'll be a black and white decision that no, there's got going to be any immunity for a lot there, but I'm curious to see where they draw that line. Yeah. Okay. All right. We'll check in with you next week. Have a great weekend, Jared. Thank you so much. Hello. It is Ryan, and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? 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