We had a federal "yacht tax" (literally) from 1991 to 1993. It didn't work very well. See http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/lance-mcmillian/07-12-2011/tax-rich-

We had a federal "yacht tax" (literally) from 1991 to 1993. It didn't work very well. See http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/lance-mcmillian/07-12-2011/tax-rich-tried-doesn%E2%80%99t-work http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/lance-mcmillian/07-12-2011/t... for the gory details, but the summary is that people bought many fewer yachts, a bunch of yacht-making companies went bankrupt, 25,000 employees of said companies were laid off, and revenue from the tax was far below projections (because the purchase volume fell). Now it's possible that one issue here was credibility of the tax: maybe people figured it would be repealed soon and just tried to wait it out. But it's hard to tell, and even if that's the issue any proposal to introduce taxes like this needs to take that factor into account.