Inviting chill nonhostile armchair philosophers. Topic: taxes. What are your thoughts on taxes in relation to your ideal government? No mention of parties nor ideologies please.
My thoughts: I am in one of the poorest counties in my state and when voting rolls around, every vote is whether to repeal raises in taxes done by the government without consent of the people. I view that as fundamentally wrong.
I will also say I would not tax personal income nor property. It is not a feelgood thing to have 10 acres and if i make a really nice house on it that means I have to pay more. Incentives are wrong there. I should feel only good about improving my home.
Business taxes tho I agree with but think are typically done wrong. Government should never be raising taxes in my county like they do. Let’s say we are a government getting 10$ a year from a business making 1000$ a year because taxes are 1%. But we need 20$. The solution according to my current local politicians is to raise taxes to 2%. But there is another, more moral solution. We could also keep taxes 1% and pursue legislation that results in our 1000$ business instead bringing in 2000$ per year. This way we are not just a parasite draining more and more from our people. We get more money BECAUSE OUR PEOPLE GET MORE MONEY. A moral government, according to me, should have little taxes but across the board on all businesses it values. It should never raise them; they are to tie the wealth of the government to the wealth of it’s people. Then, it should focus not on parasitically draining more and more, but keep them forever small and focus on raising the prosperity of it’s people. Through the prosperity of it’s people should the moral government allow it’s own prosperity.
And that is my view on taxes (tariffs are another topic).
please, if you are a peaceful armchair philosopher like me, share your own ideal tax system or lack thereof! Thank you :)
This is an interesting take, and I never viewed taxes as ethical or not. I however would not call taxes parasitic, as they are used to finance healthcare, education, culture etc. So there is a give and take, like in a symbiotic relationship.
I think we consider it parasitic whenever we are already struggeling financially, aren’t convinced the money is spent well by the government or feel above the government due to societal status.
Where I am personally unhappy with taxes is regarding certain goods fresh food, womens hygene products etc. - essential every day items. After the pandemic these things became somewhat pricey. However, I am not sure reducing taxes on food would be financially sustainable and a state that is bankrupt is the worst possible outcome.
I wanted to say more and adress more points, but I am too tired and can’t really express as well, so I’ll cut this short right here :)
You asked about taxes in relation to my “ideal government” so I’m going to go ahead and pretend that corruption at a government level doesn’t exist because that’s a big part of ideal for me.
Full disclosure, I am a professional tax preparer and have a lot of bugaboos about the current u.s. system so my thoughts on ideal are basically a full dismantling of what we currently have.
I think most people want to care about other people, but when u get down to survival pretty much everyone is going to choose self (meaning self and family) first (which is not unreasonable). So it’s up to community as a whole (in this case, government) to solve for survival and remove that fear, and use taxes to assist in evening out the rest.
So ideally, no taxes on items essential for living….your home, your food, necessary personal care items, clothing, etc. No taxes on your income set at a reasonable level that would allow every individual to have baseline needs met. Might have to have that baseline be different depending on your living situation tho this baseline also considers that no individual human should be able to live in a 10 bedroom mansion.
Once u are above this baseline (which should be relatively generous) then taxation of income occurs, maybe to the point of 100%, and that is used to maintain municipal/governmental systems. Any excess if it exists is redistributed as a “dividend” to every taxpayer.
Yup I know this sounds kind of authoritarian or communist or both. But I’m going on the unicorn fairy assumption that corruption in govt wouldn’t occur and all taxes would be used appropriately and as promised. Thus, not scary.
I’m not sure how it fits in but I do think there should be incentives for research and development to keep humans innovating. I’m not sure what that looks like exactly without skewing equitable distribution. But also I think a fair amount of people would still want to innovate even without monetary incentives and maybe that’s the people we want doing the innovating anyways. The ones who do it for the sake of curiosity and societal improvement rather than self enrichment. Yes it would probably be slower…but given how dangerous some of our technological advancements have been, I’m also not sure if this is a bad thing.
I think that flat tax would be ideal. Except it shouldn’t be applied to food, education, or medical.
Then no tax time at end of the year. Cuz it’s already done–year round. And the rich would actually pay more taxes, because they buy more stuff.
If you live a frugal life, you’re paying less taxes, cuz your buying less stuff.
And as long as it’s not applied to food, then it shouldn’t negatively effect lower income brackets.
And no tax cheats, because even if they only got paid in cash/bought stuff with cash, still taxed because goods are taxed. So people who do shady “cash only” deals, are still paying taxes.
And I bet since everyone would be paying, more taxes would be collected, but I bet the average tax-payer would pay nearly the same or even less than what they pay in taxes now.