Inheritance tax is not a wealth tax (the person who accumulated the wealth has died), it's just another income tax (which NYT wants to raise to an absurdly high rate).

Taxing wealth is far more equitable than taxing income; taxing wealth gives low-medium earners more discretion to spend on needs like housing, clothing, food, child care, education, transportation, etc (needs that differ between families, and which families are better equipped to assess than the government), while taxing income gives the government a share of people's money before they can decide what to do with it. Tax wealth while people are alive (on an annual basis), rather than destroy a company/farm/estate by having the government swoop in and take an enormous share of it (do we really want the government in the business of taking over companies and farms?)

Of course, wealthy people who don't want to pay taxes could buy yachts and fancy cars, but that could be remedied easily by instituting high sales taxes on luxury items.