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I disagree with this reading of the article. Perhaps the author edited the article after this comment but I see it structured as: 1. Small introduction briefly
by dan-robertson 6y ago
I disagree with this reading of the article. Perhaps the author edited the article after this comment but I see it structured as:
1. Small introduction briefly mentioning that while exemptions do exist for business inputs, tax systems often fail to have exemptions in all the cases that they ought to (ie the cases that would be exempt under a VAT regime), including four links to estimates of these failures
2. Mention that the real world lies between the following example and a true VAT system.
3. Detailed toy example of the effects of these inefficiencies (ie in the cases where the exemptions do not apply)
4. Brief discussion about reasons for the current system
I’m going to guess that the reason you missed this is that two key points of the argument are hidden in the introduction and the article is dominated by the (perhaps) less important worked example. But maybe you think the claims in the introduction are so obviously false that you don’t see any need in mentioning them, or maybe they were added to the article after you read it.
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- dyno-might 6y agoI can't imagine anyone would care, but if you'd like, you're welcome to browse the full commit history! :) https://github.com/dyno-might/dyno-might.github.io/commits/master/_posts/2020-12-09-sales-tax-creates-more-unnecessary-pain-than-value-added-tax.md https://github.com/dyno-might/dyno-might.github.io/commits/m... I didn't change the article between submitting and the time you made your comment. I did just add two paragraphs to the end of the "Before We Begin" section to try to clarify this point. (Your interpretation was what I intended.)
- dan-robertson 6y agoI didn’t really have a problem with the article. I wonder if the issue is that the article looks too much like the (false) claim that sales tax always works like your example, which is refuted by pointing out the exemptions, rather than the claim that the exemptions don’t always work. I can imagine that pointing out some (hypothetical) tax where rates aren’t marginal could get a similar reaction here (ie lots of “OP doesn’t understand marginal tax rates, but that’s ok because lots of people are stupid,” rather than “oh dear, that’s not a very good tax system, I wonder how that flaw slipped through.”)