Let's discuss the pros and cons of three competing "single tax" platforms.
tax paid by a person who inherits money or property or a levy on the estate (money and property) of a person who has died.
levy on the unimproved value of land
commonly a sales tax(see pic. This would be THumP's implementation)
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If you answered 'yes' to at least one question, you have a good tax. If both answers were 'no', it's a bad tax.
I tax - yes
L tax - yes
C tax - no
I Tax - birthright ownership of interest collecting, price inflating wealth is harmful in my opinion.
L Tax - landowners will develop land to curb levies. development will create heat and add to global warming, if you wanna go there.
C Tax - stock exchanges and fast food are harmful in my opinion.
hey who hear likes the smell of baked bred i do
Georgist Gang assemble?
I'm assuming flat taxes here.
Is there any reason why it's absolutely necessary for people to inherit entire companies? I can understand the family home, and even the three cars. But what does it add for people to inherit multi-million dollar companies?
Mostly fucks lower income property owners.
Fucks lower income households even more. Consumption - on average - makes up a greater deal of lower income total spending than high income.
There's also something uniquely perverse about appropriating worker surplus value twice. No taxes for the working class, kthx.
Taxes should be abolished, along with wage labor, private property and money itself.
Pragmatic goals only.
LVT is the best idea in general.
The only hitch I can think of is corruption in calculations, but that is a liability with any tax code pretty much.
The pros - land and natural resources are seen as public resources. Private ("real)" property thusly doesn't exist. This would render a number of thing unprofitable:
Real estate speculation, abandoning buildings just to sell them at higher costs later, generally accumulating vast swathes of private land and resources, etc.
Housing crises would be resolved, those who owned more property would pay more and not be able to hide income in real estate investments (classic laundering scheme), because basic housing prices fell, the prices of other goods would fall as well.
It's also easily the most ethically sound form of taxation. Inheritance tax is next best (because it taxes unearned income), but probably not practical as a single tax. The wealth of the earth is never itself the product of any individual's labor, and it makes little since that a man could lay claim to it.
Trash.
Good when applied to rich aristocrat pokies. Bad when applied to poor peasant families. Should exist, but with an exception for peasants/small farmers.
See above
Yes, but not for revenue but to control social behavior.
A simple inheritance tax can be circumvented. Rich guy figures out he has 5 years of life ahead tops, he can just start giving away stuff, right? So, how would you address that? The closer to death the person is, the more like an inheritance the gift is. So, maybe there could be a fat tax on gifts, and when grandpa kicks the bucket, you get money back, the longer the time between date of the gift and date of death, the more money you get back. The LetsNotMurderGrandpaTaxationIncentive(TM)
Land Value Tax: Best.
I don't own any and won't ever and can say the same of my siblings, so take a guess how many tears I shed for you.
Consumption tax: Worst. I have seen some Keynesian propose a counter-cyclical consumption tax, to be raised and lowered automatically based on some key economic values, but meh.
Hmm I wonder why rural areas are so right-wing?
What year do you think we live in?
All the more reason to screw them with an LVT. Plus there are moralistic arguments for an LTV too.
Such as what?
Good but probably not reliable enough to actually fund the level of social services neede
best by default
might provide more revenue than LVT but is terrible since it's usually regressive.
also, even when not regressive, in general i object to taxation at the point of consumption over taxation for having, particularly since (as we're picking a single tax) inheritance is in effect.
because they're stupid tbh, same as right wing urban areas.
plenty of people in rural areas own no land too, and many of those who do own land are (if you're lucky, petit) bourg tier rather than the "average" countryside resident.
This makes me recall something I've been thinking about making a thread on:
WHAT IF ALL TAXES WERE REPLACED WITH INFLATION?
I'm not entirely sure which sectors of the economy the "tax" burden would fall on, and who would end up paying less than at present. But it has some interesting ramifications, such as the fact that there would be no need for the government to track the income nor spending of individuals and businesses.
Too easy to tax-dodge, also would result in very uneven revenues.
Bretty gud
Absolute porky garbage. Rich people spend a far smaller portion of their income/savings than poor people, and compensating for this inherent regressivity with floors or caps only ends up shifting rich peoples' taxes to the middle class instead of the lower class. Reminder to Europeans: VAT SUCKS DONKEY DICK
Off the top of my head: inflation would probably be a very flat tax, but with more impact on savers than consumers assuming consumer wages improve.
Those on fixed incomes would also be in trouble. (Though for pensioners, unemployed, etc, you could index link their payments.)
for workers the situation would be variable. For example during the 1970s real wages did grow between 1970 and 1979 despite the high inflation, but real wage growth has been zero in the UK since the global financial crisis even though inflation has been low - because wage growth has also been low. so it's really important that workers are powerful enough to hold their position.
As you say though, it's an interesting idea.
One objection I've sometimes heard to this idea, is that what gives money its value over other means of exchange, is the government's insistence on only money for the payment of taxes, and since everyone is required to pay taxes, this gives people a strong incentive to use money. If you eliminated other taxes, this incentive wouldn't exist, and more direct measures against other methods of exchange (like banning possession of large amounts of foreign currencies, precious metals, etc.) could only do so much before black market activity became uncontrollable.
I can sort of think of some other government incentives to use money, such as receiving public transfer payments, buying services (or even some centrally planned commodities) from the government, and the need of large banks and other investors to buy sovereign instruments such as bonds, but would that be enough to compensate for the unattractiveness of such an inflationary fiat currency?
best argument i've heard for inheritance taxes on wealth: youtube.com
Excise taxes are for so-called extravagant goods such as tobacco and soft drinks. Fresh fruit and fruit juice are usually not taxed. However the excise tax applies to expenses which nowadays can't really be considered extravagant such as gasoline but have to be taxed to generate revenue.
At one point certain types of paper were taxed. Every piece of that paper had to be stamped.
In the US it's the Estate Tax and the Generation-skipping Transfer Tax. Only 5000 people pay the Estate Tax every year. The Generation-skipping Transfer tax kicks in after about $1 million. The other 50% is enough to put food on the table.
There are tax exemptions for certain retirement arrangements that allow the middle class to side-step "death taxes," so only the rich have to pay them. The only problem in this regard is that the rich are the only donors that count to either Democrat or Republican members of Congress. Bernie's muh 27-for-15 didn't get him elected unfortunately.