The big differences are:

- Wealth tax is much lower, think a percent of your wealth or less vs 20% of your gains.

- You can avoid wealth tax by spending. If you sell a bunch of shares to earn $100k then take a year off to see the world, you pay no tax on that (other than sales taxes etc).

- In practice a lot of things aren't covered by wealth tax. If you spend on a fancy new TV it's not measured. Only the big ticket items are wealth taxed (houses, financial assets, art, cash piles, etc).