In an era where people will loot stores whenever they can get away with it, I don’t believe you can assert that a tax is confiscatory when people won’t pay it. People would take the toys out of your front yard if they thought you wouldn’t shoot them.
And if your state has tax cheats, it is your problem, because the state is going to get money to pay for services somehow, and if it isn’t coming from the tax cheats, it is going to come from the people who obey the law simply because it is the right thing to do, not because they are afraid of going to jail.
I guess that isn’t your problem if you are in the latter category, but it is if you are in the former category. Unless you like paying taxes for all the tax cheats. I don’t.
Many states have income and sales tax because it is a good mix of taxes that spreads the burden fairly evenly, and provides a reasonable and predictable source of revenue in various economic conditions.
I don’t have the problem you seem to have with businesses that make money from people in a state being tasked with collecting taxes for the state. However, I would be happy to support a law that reimbursed business for that task. Of course, such a reimbursement would be paid for by taxes, including business taxes, so I imagine the businesses probably are just as well off under the current scheme.
It isn’t the cost of collecting sales tax that is the burden in this case though — it is the difficulty competing with businesses that charge 5-8% less for the same items, because they are not collecting the taxes, and people who buy from them are not paying their taxes directly as the law requires.
It would be much simpler to just let the government take all your money, then they could send you what they think you should have.
Sounds like you need to find a better place to live.
Your post is incidental to me, because I happen to live in one of the few places that does not have sales tax... You know, like it used to be wherever you are.
No, sales taxes are not implemented because they are some sort of fair balance, Sales tax is implemented because they done wrung as much as they could out of income taxes without folks blowing a cork. And, like gasoline taxes, sales tax winds up being embedded revenue that no one pays attention to. Folks wind up not even knowing how badly they are getting reamed.
And finally, paying businesses to collect the tax is not the issue - the coercion is the issue - Placing the responsibilities of one upon another. And in practice, it winds up being a rake on the pot - the tax is actually wholly on the business owner, not on you. You may pay more to cover it, but it is the business owner that is on the hook for it. Employment taxes and health taxes amount to the same thing, in the same fashion.
Which leads me again to my main thrust: When the tax man comes and takes the tax directly out of YOUR own pocket, and YOU are responsible to defend YOUR own self, and keep track of it YOUR own self, I guarantee that taxation will go precipitously downward in a fairly immediate fashion.