But, but... I thought income taxes were Marxist
Adam Smith, the father of modern economic thought, had a lot to say about taxation still great book Wealth of Nations pp. 561-64. Here is what he had to say about bad taxes:
1. A tax was bad that required a large bureaucracy for administration.
2. A tax was bad that "may obstruct the industry of the people, and discouraged them from applying to certain branches which might give maintenance and employment to great multitudes. While it obliges the people to pay, it may thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which might enable them more easily to do so."
3. A tax was bad that encouraged evasion. "The law, contrary all the ordinary principals of justice, first creates the temptation, and then punishes those who yield to it." Evasion is also bad, says Smith, because it tends to "put an end to the benefits which the community might have received from the employment of their capitals."
4. A tax is bad that put the people through "odious examinations of the tax-gatherers, and exposes them to much unnecessary trouble, vexation, and oppression...It is in one or other of these four different ways that taxes are frequently so much more burdensome to the people than they are beneficial to the sovereign"
I ask you, which of these are NOT true of our current tax system?