the best tax is no tax.
Nathyn, there’s more than one point I do not understand about your theory.
First: how do you propose applying a progressive consumption tax? Will people be forced to go around with some kind of ID card which will be slipped in a credit-card like device at the moment of purchase? Will they have to carry a “mark of the Beast” like in the Apocalypse? How about foreigners?
Second: it’s obvious that you live in the US, where the evil of heavy taxation is less felt than in Europe and tax dodging is still considered an “extraordinary” offense. I suggest you spend a few months in a small town in Catalunya or Lombardy to see how widespread this phenomenon is and why people think it a necessary “self-defense” measure and tend to tolerate tax-dodgers or even (privately) defend them. Sweden’s largest employer is the local IRS: there must be a reason to this.
Third: I remember that I once heard a conservative English economist (don’t ask who he was) proposing a progressive consumption tax to substitute for the present income taxation. On the paper it sounds great but there’s a small catch. Which guarantees will be given that the progressive consumption tax will not simply be piled on top of the income tax or that, when money will not be enough to pay for all expenses, the income tax will not be reintroduced? He was asked this question but he was unable to answer properly.
Sorry to be a thorn in the side but I am very “down to earth” on economical matters.
It probably has something to do with taxes being sticky.[A]
The worst tax is the income tax. As in a previous post, if all men are created equal, then why the graduated tax? Pinkos, hypocrites, all of them. If we are taught to believe in America that every body has a right to vote, that everybody has rights in the Bill of Rights, then why are people discriminated against? We are slaves to fiat and social welfare, and when it will all come down, there will be no difference between America and Nazi Germany, and the numbers will just not add up.
I agree that the income tax is the worst type of tax. But your argument only addresses the progressive income tax. All income taxes, whether progressive or “regressive” are worse than other forms of tax because the means required to enforce an income tax are more severe and intrusive than the means needed to enforce other forms of tax.
My response was geared only toward progressive income tax, because it was the direction where some other posts were going toward, and as of now, “progressives” are a larger problem at hand that has to be stopped. If the so called “progressives” are stopped, then you can go from there, but considering that we have an income tax in America right now, the first thing that must be stopped are “millionaire” and other taxes against the middle and upper classes. The income tax as a whole is the worst, but the worst of that is the “progressive” ideal.
The worse taxes for the poor are the “monopoly tax”, the inflation tax, and the corporate income tax. The poor has to pay more taxes for the embedded corporate income tax than income taxes.
Here’s a what percentage of their income has to be paid in taxes and hidden taxes by GDP per capita quintile:
|
Quintiles of Household Cash Money Income, Calendar Year 2004 |
|||||
|
Bottom 20 Percent| |
Second 20 Percent| |
Third 20 Percent| |
Fourth 20 Percent| |
Top 20 |
|
|
Total Federal Taxes |
38.9% |
55.7% |
61.5% |
64.4% |
70.2% |
|
Income |
4.0% |
12.0% |
17.6% |
22.6% |
35.7% |
|
Payroll |
21.2% |
30.6% |
32.0% |
30.4% |
22.5% |
|
Corporate Income |
6.3% |
8.4% |
8.2% |
8.2% |
8.1% |
|
Gasoline |
1.6% |
1.2% |
1.0% |
0.8% |
0.6% |
|
Alcoholic Beverages |
0.8% |
0.4% |
0.4% |
0.3% |
0.2% |
|
Tobacco |
1.2% |
0.6% |
0.3% |
0.2% |
0.1% |
|
Diesel Fuel |
0.2% |
0.3% |
0.3% |
0.3% |
0.3% |
|
Air Transport |
0.5% |
0.4% |
0.4% |
0.4% |
0.4% |
|
Other Excise |
1.0% |
0.6% |
0.4% |
0.4% |
0.2% |
|
Customs, Duties, etc. |
2.2% |
1.2% |
0.9% |
0.8% |
0.5% |
|
Estate & Gift |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
0.0% |
1.7% |
To create a value - any value - consumes time. Lifetime. To steal part of the values I create means to steal part of my life. Taxation is piecemeal murder. Progressive taxation steals more time from people who are more productive, that’s why it is more destructive than flat taxation. “Just” taxation is a sick joke as would be “just” murder or “just” theft.
So let us call a spade a spade. Any way of taxation is evil. It does not matter which way.
Taxes on production are the worst.
Edit: i got rid of my comment on land value taxeslest I be called a socialist or a statist…
What is bad about speculation? Stock and other speculation is basically the same as entrepreneurship, it’s predicting the uncertain future. Why should predicting only be left to the producers of goods?
I would tend to agree with Inflation as #1 on the worst tax list. I do not care for the so-called “progressive” income tax either. Besides it’s Marxist origins, I see no “progress” associated with such taxation. It’s simply part of the old marxist axiom: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, although I may not have recalled marx verbatim. I would certainly agree that the current “progressive” income tax has been quite successful when it comes to setting one class of individuals against another, even going so far as to idealize the concept of envy, and serving as a means by which the larger mob (at the ballot box) can punish smaller mobs. This is after all just what Marx predicted. Just because something is claimed to be “progressive” does not mean that it is either desirable or even genuinely progressive.
I would prefer an entirely regressive tax system that does not ask a man’s occupation or anything regarding his economic station in life, his domestic relationship with another individual, his success (or failure) in bringing forth offspring into this world, questions regarding any physical disabilities that he may or may not have, his inclinations toward charity, his religious affiliation(s) or any other personal information that the government desires, not to simply collect a tax, but to provide information needed by government in order to better manage more and more of the details of our lives.
If I make a purchase at, say, Wal-Mart, I hand over legal tender, in the form of Federal Reserve Notes, in order to cover the cost of the items I desire plus an additional amount, as a fixed percentage, which is turned over to the State treasury. The more I purchase, the more I pay. I receive any change due and leave with my purchased goods. I do not fill out any forms, engage in any copious record-keeping or forced regurgitation of personal economic data (for which I cannot receive compensation). How I came about the possession of that legal tender is never a subject of the transaction nor should it be. When I hand over my legal tender, I do not have to swear, under penalty of perjury, as to information submitted to the retailer because no such information is required. It is a tax which hears no evil, sees no evil and speaks no evil.
The current system is simply a legal snare which, according to testimony from the IRS’ own lawyers, can get any individual taxpayer prosecuted (whether guilty or not) anytime the government chooses to do so, and has been an excellent servant to various presidents who have sought to punish their political enemies. Surely one, who advocates genuine freedom for all citizens, cannot genuinely lend support to such a system.
Best regards.
You are right about that, the income tax is so invasive to personal liberty, so fundamentally unfair (loopholes can be bought for the right price), and such a burden on trying to enforce (is there such a thing such as the “income tax industrial complex”?) It has to be the worst tax EVAH.
I’m obligated by all common standards of decency to preface this reply with the following: All forcible expropriate of private property is theft, taxation is forcible expropriation of private property, ergo taxation is theft. Now, what is the “best” tax? I’d say it is the POLL TAX. If we are to be taxed for anything it should be for exercising our so-called “right” to coerce others into submitting to the arbitrary will of the majority.