Taxes

[Jonathan Buhacoff]

Proposals:

* No personal income tax
* Corporate income tax
* Sales tax
* No special tax deals

Intent:

The primary purpose of taxes is to fund government operations. A secondary purpose of taxes is to promote a certain economic activity or behavior (by lowering taxes on it) or deter undesirable economic activity or behavior (by raising taxes on it).

Discussion:

Tax laws for example are entirely too complicated. Sales tax for people who buy things, and tiered revenue tax for all businesses. Non-profit and public benefit corporations must still be taxed, possibly with a lower flat revenue tax than for-profit business — but they still need to be taxed, because it still costs money to keep track of them and make sure they are not cheating in some way, being used as a “tax shelter” for wealthy people, giving extravagant “benefits” to their officers or board members, etc. basically not cheating the public by pretending to be one thing and really being something else.

These proposals would ensure that even illegal residents pay tax and contribute to government funding because it will be built into purchases and they don’t have to send any separate payment to the government. Instead of demanding and processing tax filings from every adult in the country, the government can focus its efforts on collecting taxes from businesses. There are fewer businesses than there are people, and businesses already need to keep records so it’s less of a burden to them than the personal income tax is to individuals. Also, many businesses must register for a business license and advertise their products and services for people to find them so the government can find a business more easily than a person who hasn’t filed an annual form.

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