Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert Minneman
The OP had the subject as "What should the top income tax rate be?", so obviously in a perfect world, 0% of income would be taxed.
All taxation should be consumption based, with exceptions for essentials (food, utilities, housing, transportation, education, and healthcare).
Taxing based on "non-essentials" purchasing evens the playing field and is more "fair", as a person making 20k won't be taxed like a person making 2,000,000... This method would also end up taxing a lot of various criminal enterprises, where currently most criminal income is tax free anyway, a consumption based tax would certainly even that out as well.
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theoretically, economists say the best tax would be fixed and levied at the beginning of your life...assuming they knew your earnings power. consumption based taxes are actually among the worse types of taxes because they distort buying and selling decisions the most....creating a wedge between buyers and sellers.
fixed taxes are less distortive (think property taxes)