I see that Charles Murray has a piece in the NY Times called You Are What You Tax which echoes my sentiment.
Murray, author of The Bell Curve, makes me want to double-check my thoughts instincively, but the arguments he puts forward here are similar to mine. He does, however, neglect the “let the government decide” checkbox, which I think a lot of people would take– that’s why we have a government anyway.
I would say that corporations wouldn’t get that “vote”, as corporations don’t have opinions, shareholders do– if the shareholders voted, then maybe. With income tax only accounting for 40% or so of governement revenue, surely there would be enough cash in the other 60% or so to cover shortfalls in other areas.
Most of all, it’s a simple feedback form– one that the government could really use. If there’s support for paying down the debt, then do it. If there’s support for NASA, go wild. And so on.
Unfortunately I don’t recall just where he wrote this, but I’m pretty sure Fred Pohl proposed something like this a couple of decades back.
I would say that corporations wouldn’t get that “vote”, as corporations don’t have opinions, shareholders do– if the shareholders voted, then maybe. With income tax only accounting for 40% or so of governement revenue, surely there would be enough cash in the other 60% or so to cover shortfalls in other areas.
You know, everybody keeps saying that we should raise taxes on corporations, but what most people either don’t know or don’t realize, is that corporations don’t PAY taxes. They COLLECT them from their customers. Corporations simply raise the price on their products to cover the cost of any tax increase. So when we get mad at corporations for “corporate welfare” and we want the government to lower the boom on corporations by getting rid of tax loopholes, we are simply asking the government to increase our tax burdens. Same thing with library fines, business licenses, building permits, etc. All simply another form of tax. They just call them use fees.