We analyse the effect of a proportional wealth tax on asset returns, portfolio choice, and asset pricing. The tax is levied annually on the market value of all holdings at a uniform rate. We show that such a tax is economically equivalent to the government acquiring a proportional stake in the investor's portfolio each period, a form of risk sharing in which expected wealth and risk are reduced by the same factor, while the return per share is unaffected. This multiplicative separability drives
