Was kinda my point.
The taxing authorities claim ownership of a percentage of what you make up front on income tax.
But when they demand a cut on your retail purchases as well, even purchases they can’t directly tax, then they are claiming ownership of even more money.
So I was just pondering on why they don’t just pull a number out of the air and confiscate that up front and leave the sales part alone?
Of course I don’t like that idea at all.
I can answer that. There are many forms of wealth, and the government attempts to tax each of them to varying degrees, by whatever amount they can get away with.
By having multiple taxing authorities, the government can generate a more stable revenue stream. Now, I personally think that an income tax is better than a sales tax, since the income tax is a tax on money I obviously have.
However, people don’t always have income, but they almost always have to buy things, so a sales tax will bring in a much more stable flow of money. Also, I like the sales tax because it is much harder to make it “progressive”, meaning that it is a tax that hits EVERYBODY.
I think all taxes should be applied to everybody equally. We are almost to the point where a majority of the people in this country don’t pay income taxes, and therefore can vote for people who will raise those taxes without feeling any pain. The constitution originally required all taxes to apply across the board so we wouldn’t be able to “tax the other guy”, and the income tax is the easiest tax to apply to a small subset of the population.
A national sales tax, or the “fair tax”, would be a better tax to make sure everybody feels the pain when they ask to raise taxes to pay for more government programs.
Property taxes are really good at generating stable income, but are really bad because the ownership of property has no relationship to your current ability to hand cash to the government. However, property is probably one of the better measurements of how much burden you put on government, since it is property that forces government to build roads, and provide police and fire protection. But the correlation between property VALUE and cost to the government is minimal — a 4-family home costs the same no matter whether it is a derilict house or a mansion.
Sin taxes are the easiest to levy and raise, because most of us are more than happy to get other people to pay our burdens for us, especially when it’s not a sin we partake of. We non-smoking non-drinking non-gamblers owe a debt of gratitude to the smoking, drinking, gambling population that keeps OUR taxes low. But it is patently unfair for the government to tax particular behavior, and also opens the door for government interference in our freedom, through coersive taxataion.
Anyway, my point is that we can argue over forms of taxation, but whatever form is in use, it should be applied fairly and across the board. So if a state has a sales tax, it should apply to what a person in that state buys, whether they make the purchase at the corner store, at the mall in the next state, or on the internet. That is what is “fair” within the confines of the current tax structure.