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Could a system such as a national sales tax, provide privacy _and_ revenue at the same time? We need to collect data b/c the gov't has to know about your incom
by pragmatic 16y ago
Could a system such as a national sales tax, provide privacy _and_ revenue at the same time?
We need to collect data b/c the gov't has to know about your income, your investments, etc, etc. But how about a (hypothetical) system where you only pay taxes when you purchase goods. There wouldn't seem to be any fundamental reason to keep information on _who_ purchased what. Just the fact that the transaction occurred.
- davidw 16y ago"Hypothetically", in Italy, lots of cash transactions with no receipts happen because of the VAT, which is something like a sales tax.
- rbanffy 16y agoBrazil tried to move this into the banking system - all withdrawals were taxed. It was not very popular, but it was effective and devilishly hard to dodge. OTOH, companies routinely exchange services and that kind of transaction is very hard to tax.
- rst 16y agoA lot of European countries have tax structures biased much more heavily towards "value-added taxes" (VATs), which are, in effect, sales taxes on steroids. (Also local governments in the US.) One problem, though, is that in practice, sales taxes are generally regressive --- the poor spend a much larger fraction of their income than the rich, and so wind up getting (relatively) more heavily taxed.
- mkup 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax