Oddbean

Tariffs are better than the income tax, but still have major problems. If we are going to fund the government through taxes, we should replace 100% of taxes, at all levels of government, with sales taxes. Then require the amount of taxes taken by each government be printed on each receipt so people see, with every purchase, how much the government is truly stealing from them. If you want to help the poor, you could exempt unprocessed foods, rent (& home purchases), and/or electric power. Any time someone produces their own stuff, they can avoid paying taxes. Trading, instead of buying new, could also avoid taxation. No individual would have to deal with audits or government spying or intervention. A ton of government bureaucrats could be eliminated because we don't need to pay for paper pushers to nickel and dime the public. I don't like any taxes, but a sales tax is the fairest tax. The income tax, property tax, and death tax are the most evil.

If you have to pay property tax on your property forever, you are effectively renting the property from the government. You pay rent or they take your property. It causes old people, with paid off homes, to lose their homes because they can't afford the taxes. It causes ranchers and farmers to have to continually sell off property to pay taxes on what property remains, but with less and less property they make less and can less and less afford property taxes, eventually ending up with the family farms and ranches selling off to the mega-companies. I don't love it, but could live with a sales tax on property, but eternal property tax is evil.

Yeah but where is the line. When a majority of your paycheck is handed over to governments. Getting taxed to live is worse than getting taxed to make money imo, which is already retarded. I wonder if anyone would pay their income taxes in the US if the government didn't force withholding.

It is scary how many people don't realize they pay taxes because they "get money back from the government" at the end of the year. They don't realize they loan their money to the government interest free and then get a small portion back. They don't think about all of the "little" taxes that add up to a lot. They don't think about the cost to individuals, businesses, and the government to administer the thousands of different little taxes and how much money everyone (except the paper pushers) would benefit to not having that expense. If people saw how much they were taxed with every little purchase, they'd complain more about the government waste instead of complaining about not getting enough freebies. We could shrink government if everyone had to pay in and everyone saw how much of their hard earned money was stolen from the government. Also, an income tax punishes producers causing some people to stop producing or to leave the country for a more friendly environment reducing production. A sales tax punishes consumers and encourages everyone to produce more and save more and to fix instead dispose of things. This makes the economy more efficient. Anything you can produce for yourself enables you to avoid taxes. In reality the income tax is used more to spy on citizens and to manipulate spending patterns of citizens, than it is to fund government functions (as one of the Fed Chairman said openly). By giving the government details of your spending, you tell the government things they don't need to know. By all of the tax "write offs", they manipulate how people spend their money. Both are evil.

i became very aware of all of this about 2000 as i tried to start up my own freelance tech support service i always thought that tax refunds were an interest free loan since i first heard about them and i was very aware of the cost of administration of these taxes and actually trying to run a simple registered company to act as a vehicle for international freelance employment payments i was unable to actually even GET those refunds, and that was the whole point of it and on top, if i wanted to shut down the corporation, and not get penalised for failing to lodge statements, i had to pay some $1000 of fees to do this so you know what i did? i just left te country and never came back and i'm glad i didn't get pushed to do this kind of nonsense with my current main gig... i just get a monthly bitcoin payment to yet another new address and i'm not telling anyone without gunpoint at this point, how much, when, or who, or where and nobody is asking anyway the closest i have had contact with the government here has been dealing with customs duties, which are absurdly expensive, some 30% of the value of the price of the item plus the cost of shipping combined at some level they are gonna drive a LOT of business outside of the CBD off the books, and at some point that is going to mean bitcoin/lightning because really, it's as convenient as cards with almost zero margin

Yeah ask any business owner how much work it is handling taxes, AND how much money the company pays in taxes. Who wouldn't leave any high tax country. What am getting in return as a corporation paying loads in taxes?

One reason I don't like tariffs, custom duties, and value added taxes is they are hidden from the consumer. Consumers blame the producers or sellers for the high prices instead of the government that raised prices with hidden taxes. Everyone sees and feels a sales tax which will be more likely to keep them low.

i think government should be funded by those whose business requires coordination across broad geographical areas, and basically be specific to the market, not even government really but where the people who do the things get together and argue about what is going on and make decisions how to avoid waste and such sorta like scientific journals and other similar forums like conferences being how scientists share and build consensus and agreements and make new cooperative projects stuff like phillps head screwdrivers and bolt sizes and thread standards... that's the only government we need a monopoly on anything leads to no good... it should just be a forum for each market and market segment

Yes. I could live with that plan. I can't remember all of the details. It seems like I wanted to make a few tweaks, but overall, I liked it better than any tax plan I have ever seen (if you don't count zero taxes & fully voluntary).