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Sorry, I don't know anything about VAT, but in Australia, consumers pay 10% on all products except food, financial services, and a few other things. When Apple

Sorry, I don't know anything about VAT, but in Australia, consumers pay 10% on all products except food, financial services, and a few other things. When Apple sells an phone to a consumer in Australia, 10% of the sale price is collected by the retailer, and paid directly to the government, rather giving the full sale price to Apple, then allowing Apple to work out later what was profit and what was not. There are mixed feelings about it, but I've always liked it. If you consume a lot of stuff, you pay a lot of tax. Sounds fair to me.

throwaway2037 2y ago
> If you consume a lot of stuff, you pay a lot of tax. Sounds fair to me. Most economists view VAT/GST as a regressive tax. I don't know why so many highly advanced, liberal democracies are so dependent upon VAT/GST for tax revenues.
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  > I don't know why so many highly advanced, liberal democracies are so dependent upon VAT/GST for tax revenues. See above discussion, when wealthy people are responsible for declaring their own income, it tends to be low. GST is "regressive". You have to charge everybody the same 10%. You can't ask wealthy people to pay 40% like you can with income tax. I actually have no idea what percentage of tax revenue is GST vs Personal Income Tax vs Company Tax. I'm interested now, I'll go do some research. This is what I found https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/insights-government-finance-statistics-annual-2022-23 https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/insights-government-finance-...