3 ms·
A move towards making sales taxes less transparent in the United States is unlikely, because many U.S. founders associated with the Democratic-Republican party
by visualradio 5y ago
A move towards making sales taxes less transparent in the United States is unlikely, because many U.S. founders associated with the Democratic-Republican party such as James Madison were influenced by the French Physiocratic school economics, which considered broad-based sales taxes to be a quite harmful method of taxation that should never be relied on as a permanent source of revenue.
This opinion is most clearly expressed by Joel Barlow in "Letters Addressed to the Yeomanry of the United States: Showing the Necessity of Confining the Public Revenue to a Fixed Proportion of the Net Produce of the Land; and the Bad Policy and Injustice of Every Species of Indirect Taxation and Commercial Regulation" (1791).
- lostlogin 5y ago> broad-based sales taxes That an interesting history, thanks. The policy sort of misses the point when you are at the till and the item doesn’t cost what you thought it did. There is no way of telling if you have been hit by a broad-based sales tax, a targeted one or both.
- californical 5y agoThis is a really interesting point and got me thinking — if taxes were hidden, people wouldn’t directly notice the cost increases associated with raising sales tax. If you pay $1.12 for a $1.00 soda in city one, but $1.07 in city two, you will directly realize the tax impact that the local sales tax has. I wonder if this was originally intentional, to prevent taxes from invisibly rising without the people being aware of the impact of the price. It also makes it much harder for national brands if they like to have nice round numbers as the cost of things (which they seem to) - they can’t charge $1.00 for a soda everywhere, or their margins would be crazy wonky depending on region