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No one type of tax is the best. The key to effective taxation is to have many different kinds of tax so that there's no way for the rich to avoid paying any tax
by seunosewa 5y ago
No one type of tax is the best. The key to effective taxation is to have many different kinds of tax so that there's no way for the rich to avoid paying any taxes at all by reorganizing their financial affairs. So if you avoid one kind of tax, then you'll have to pay more of a different kind of tax. So a progressive consumption tax is perhaps a great addition to income tax, not a substitute.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago> The key to effective taxation is to have many different kinds of tax so that there's no way for the rich to avoid paying any taxes at all by reorganizing their financial affairs. Or just tax less to increase the wealth floor where avoiding it becomes useful thereby decreasing the number of people who do it thereby reducing the losses. You're basically reducing amplitude of the tax curve in order to capture a wider range. The billionaires may be stupid rich but there's so few of them they make up a negligible percent of public coffers. Nobody bothers registering their car out of state to save a $50 fee. Nobody bothers putting their house in a trust to save a couple thousand in taxes. Not hard to extrapolate from there.
- someguydave 5y agoare you interested in minimizing economic distortion or punishing rich people?
- seunosewa 5y agoI'm for government having a consistent, reliable revenue stream. For a given amount of tax revenue many smalln types of tax should be better than a few big ones. Economic distortion as a result of taxation is primarily due to tax avoidance activities by those who can afford to (large corporations and the rich), so a system that makes it not worth the effort should minimize economic distortion, too.