4 ms·
Instead of trying to tax purely digital activities, why not just raise the income/property taxes on the people who live or work in your city? This would be a lo
by whack 7y ago
Instead of trying to tax purely digital activities, why not just raise the income/property taxes on the people who live or work in your city? This would be a lot less regressive, and would prevent people from getting around it just by changing their credit card billing address. Not to mention the beauracratic nightmare of requiring SaaS companies to keep track of every customer's physical address and local tax regulations.
- SilasX 7y agoBecause raising progressive taxes that are already high make it likely you’ll trigger a death spiral where high earners flee, raising the taxes you need to levy on the rest, etc.
- malandrew 7y agoYup. I would argue that that death spiral is a feature not a bug. Governments will do every thing they can to hide the extent of their taxation by nickel and diming its citizens, testing the limits of how much can be raised before people flee. If people could see the some total of the various taxes they pay, they'd be shocked. I'd love it if Stripe or other payment processors started reporting taxes to credit card companies so we could see the total sales and other taxes we paid across all transactions on top of our income taxes.
- Eridrus 7y agoBecause it's easier politically to implement regressive taxes. Property owners in particular are politically powerful and sympathetic. They're also very motivated because the tax increases would be large and these folks are highly leveraged in their investment. So we get things like Prop 13 in CA, or property tax increase caps in NY.