The story of human government is largely the story of tax collection. One of the oldest written records, a 6,000-year-old clay tablet found in the Mesopotamian city of Lagash, captures a citizen’s dread about the heavy financial levies imposed upon them. “You can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector,” they fretted. More recently, the British government’s imposition of taxes on the American colonies were a driving force in the rebellion that yielded the United States.

Millions of Americans still fear the tax collector today. The wealthiest ones do not. By one estimate, more than one-fifth of the nation’s hidden income comes from the wealthiest 0.5 percent of Americans alone. A common conservative refrain whenever Democratic presidential candidates propose new sources of revenue to pay for healthcare or education program is that rich people will simply find ways to avoid paying it. As Republican lawmakers have also slashed the IRS’s budget over the past decade, the prophecy is effectively self-fulfilling.

It may be politically uncomfortable for the Democratic candidates to stand up for the Internal Revenue Service and its enforcement of the nation’s tax laws. After all, the IRS consistently ranks among the least popular federal agencies. But they’ll have to do so for the rest of their agenda to work. Now may also be the best time to make such a case to the American people: Not only is it good policy, it may finally be good politics.

IRS enforcement may not sound like a sexy issue on the campaign trail. That doesn’t make it any less important. Large portions of Elizabeth Warren’s policy platform, for example, hinge on her proposed wealth tax. It would impose a 2 percent annual tax on taxpayers with assets above $50 million, which would tick up to 3 percent for assets over $1 billion. In political terms, it’s a canny idea. Journalists and voters inevitably ask candidates how they would pay for their most ambitious policy items. The wealth tax’s projected revenue stream—$2.75 trillion over the next decade, according to her campaign—gives Warren a ready-made answer to those questions.

Some economists have questioned, however, whether Warren’s wealth tax would actually bring in the revenue that she expects, because wealthy Americans are so good at evading taxes. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the UC Berkeley economists who first outlined the wealth tax proposal adopted by Warren, told The Washington Post this week that they factored in a 15 percent avoidance rate to reach the $2.75 trillion figure. In a Post op-ed last month, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and University of Pennsylvania professor Natasha Sarin argued that rich families would inevitably find ways to game the system.