[Your Nightmare]

And let me go to the definition in my economics text book, Economics, Eighteenth Edition by Paul A. Samuelson [Nobel Prize winner] and William D. Nordhaus. [In the glossary it actually has an entry for "excise tax vs. sales tax"]

excise tax vs. sales tax
An excise tax is one levied on the purchase of a specific commodity or group of commodities (e.g., alcohol or tobacco). A sales tax is one levied on all commodiities with only a few specific exclusions (e.g., all purchases except food).

[ancient_geezer]

excise tax vs. sales tax
An excise tax is one levied on the purchase of a specific commodity or group of commodities (e.g., alcohol or tobacco). A sales tax is one levied on all commodiities with only a few specific exclusions (e.g., all purchases except food).

What has that to do with the central issue, of whether or not taxation of a specific product under a sales tax can be analyzed as an excise tax?

Remember?

http://star2.vub.ac.be/~dvermeir/mirrors/ingrimayne.saintjoe.edu/econ/government/ExciseTax.html

Excise Tax:

Politicians may not be fascinated with the efficiency effects of taxes, but economists are. This section looks at how one can examine the efficiency implications of a simple tax, the excise tax.

An excise tax is a sales tax on a specific item. An excise tax can be a per unit tax or an ad valorem tax. The first is a fixed amount of tax per item, while the second is a percentage of the value of the item.

 

Secondly legally an excise can be and has been emposed on occupations, employements and trades broadly and with no distinction of specific services rendered, merely of the activity of paying someone for service is sufficient to engage an ad velorum excise levied on the person paying for the service.

To analyze the such an excise requires only one define units of product and establish supply/demand curves for for the units of specific service product whether production quantity be specified in hours or piecework produced is irrelavent to the analysis.

You can keep trying however, some day you might get it right.