It is true that by taxing something you usually discourage it, but that's a simplified view that's not always the case. It assumes normal goods and a particular relationship between taxation and interest rates that doesn't necessarily bear out.

In particular, in a discussion of wealth tax vs. consumption tax, you can't rely on the naive assumption that elasticity of consumption has a significant bearing on the net effect of a consumption tax.

See, e.g. http://ntj.tax.org/wwtax/ntjrec.nsf/4E562450B2F268D985256AFC...

I said 'by and large'. It's clearly a long, complicated discussion. But I wanted to provide a reason why taxes might be termed 'punishment' rather than delve into the economics of it all, which you could probably write entire books about.