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On one hand, it's not hard. City costs X and need to raise money to cover X. I wish they would just send everyone a bill and be done with it, and not have to sn
by meesterdude 11y ago
On one hand, it's not hard. City costs X and need to raise money to cover X. I wish they would just send everyone a bill and be done with it, and not have to sneak taxes into everything. I really don't like that, especially for things which they otherwise have no involvement in.
Equally, I get that taxes are hard and certainly not popular. Not everyone can pay the same or spends their money the same way; but if you tax what I earn and tax what i spend, and you still don't have enough, that's just shitty management of my money.
Things like this, where some state gets to decide some arbitrary tax rule that companies must follow, is anti-competitive and hurts small businesses. For a large corporation to work with this is not a big deal, but for a small business it's too much to navigate.
I'm all for paying my fair share to support the infrastructure and my local community; but there has to be a better way.
- cortesoft 11y agoWell, any tax always does two things: generates revenue and affects behaviors. When taxes are designed well, both effects of the tax will be intentional and attain some desired goal. For example, carbon taxes can be used to both raise revenue to deal with the externalities of carbon pollution, and incentivize people to pollute less. These are both desirable goals. Taxes in cases like this act as ways to 'price in' the externalities of transactions that pure market based pricing will not capture. Taxes like this Netflix tax, however, do NOT seem to be attempting to 'price in' any sort of externality, nor influence behavior in any sort of socially beneficial way.