[extropy-chat] Income Tax

Adrian Tymes wingcat at pacbell.net
Sun Jul 31 00:42:08 UTC 2005


--- The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>      IMHO, I believe that the IRS should be abolsihed

Someone's got to tally the sales taxes, even under your new proposal.

> and a nationwide sales tax should be implemented on
> everything except for store bought food.

Why the exception?  And if store bought food counts, how about food
bought straight from the farmers?  Or, in the case of homogenized milk
and other processed foods, food that never goes through a store?

> First, it would eliminate the
> excuses of the rich that they bear an unfair tax
> burden.

Nope.  The rich spend more, so they'd get taxed more, ergo they bear an
"unfair" (higher than average) burden.

> Second, while the rich may still try to hide
> their money, the moment they tried to spend it, the
> government would gets its due.

Unless, of course, they have their wealth invested in things other than
money - e.g., if they exchange stock or gold for corporate assets.

> It would equalize taxes for
> corporations and individuals.

Corporations can set up their own stores, buy food "loaned" to it, and
then pay the farmer.  Individuals can't pull that off as easily.

> It would eliminate tax
> incentives for monopolistic business practices.

How about for someone to create a food monopoly?

> It
> would be just plain more efficient.

It would also greatly restrict the government's ability to encourage
behavior using tax policy.  This being intolerable to legislators, they
would quickly vote to make more (and unbalanced) exceptions, even if it
cost them their political careers in many cases (and their replacements
would pick up said tax powers and run with them).  Ergo, it seems that
in the present political climate, attempting to implement this would do
more harm than good.



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