Not GP, but I think there’s a reasonable argument that taxing income for the purpose of funding essential government services is on stronger ethical footing than taxing wealth for the specific purpose of wealth redistribution.
The latter is IMO not ethical if it excessively punishes productive activity. In this case “impractical is unethical”, even as I’d prefer a UBI world in many ways.
You hit the nail on the head.. I dont find income based taxation to be ethical at all, and believe either a Land Use tax, Service fees, or contextual public finance is a better way, not stealing a part of a persons labor.
I also see government as only being needed for "night watchman" status, not as providers of all your needs from craddle to grave, under such a system of governance visitors to the nation are no different than citizens, as everyone is equal before the law, and the law is only used for peaceful dispute resolution between 2 parties. Not to dole out political based favors via an ever increasing state via both government contracts to big business, and government subsides to protect business, and social welfare which also is a handout to large business..
Once that state has no power to redistribute wealth (often from the poor to the rich in practice not in the manner many democrats envision the redistribution is going in their fantasy) then the need to track every dollar, and every person drops to near zero
The problem with your comment is that it assumes that because someone benefits more from something they represent the bulk of the cost of that thing. That's just not true.
Or that taxation should be made pro rata of the utility someone derives from something which is an odd idea.
Once you give up that calculus you will be hard-pressed to defend these levels of taxation without consciously conceding that this is in fact organized racket. You can dress it with a skirt and call it necessary, moral, or utilitarian, it's still the same beast underneath.
I don’t really buy the moral argument. The government regulates, facilitates and protects the economy in which you work and earn. It creates and acts to protect the value of the currency itself.
The problem with consumption taxes is they can be bypassed in many ways, such as by spending your earnings abroad. I do think income taxes at higher brackets can be counter productive because they also can be bypassed in various ways, but that’s a practical matter not a moral one.
Yes if you think we shouldn’t tax people and not have an healthy modern society with government services and let wealth pile up for tens of generations completely unmolested then you’re right.
Paying a fair amount of taxes definitely has a big ethical component to it, AND the laws around it probably ought to be changed, but that doesn't imply that they should be changed strictly because of the ethical reasons.
Specifically, collecting a reasonable amount of taxes is key to the function of governments as they're set up.
It would be unethical to sell somebody a car that secretly has no motor, but ethics isn't the only reason cars need motors.
Property tax makes sense, I’m essentially supporting my country / region through payment to protect said land.
Tax on goods crossing boarder makes sense, I have to pay for inspections and potentially for protection.
Tax on sale of good kind of makes sense, because again we need protection (likely equivalent to worth of good).
Income tax is this weird one because it seems like punishment for being productive. Arguably we are paying back society for being productive? But that seems odd given we are taxed for everything else.
I’m any case, my gripe here is no one should be pro tax IMO, maybe pro “free medical care”. But why would anyone call for taxes. Wealth redistribution already happens with estate tax and honestly (from what we’ve seen in history) wealth redistribution kind of happens automatically.
I understand with what you’re saying and agree that this can be useful, but it also amounts to a lawless “do whatever we want” attitude amongst highly privileged people that may run counter to democratic concerns. Wealthy people could say taxes are immoral and not pay them, which could lead to underfunding of schools and hospitals, for example.
I really don't see any value in debating ethics here. Tax policy is no different than spending policy - it's a tool and can be wielded for better or worse. Sometimes, government gets it right. Other times not. Governments, democracies especially, are made of humans.
I'm deeply troubled that the majority of the respondents here are in such strong favor taxes as a means of wealth redistribution and social engineering.
I wonder if it's because you are natural problem solvers, and see taxes as a way to solve problems. With taxes you can reward behavior you like and punish behavior you don't like (social engineering). You can attempt to address the logarithmic nature of wealth and the perceived unfairness of that. For a hacker, taxes are seductive, I suppose.
We've come to a point where taxes are so accepted that your moral right to take money from your neighbor at the point of a gun is not even questioned anymore. The debate has moved from whether you are morally right to do so, to whether it is economically optimal to do so. This is a shame.
To me, the Laffer curve is ignored at your peril when contemplating raising taxes. If that stops your enthusiasm for this course of action, I'll take what I can get, but it's like having you refrain from killing me because prison would be inconvenient for you. I'd really rather you didn't kill me because you felt it was morally wrong to do so.
There are other ways for governments to raise revenue besides income taxes, but they lack the social engineering and individual control that income taxes provide. I understand why governments like income taxes. What I am struggling to understand is why you do.
I think taxation is legitimate when needed for protection of people's rights, which is the purpose of government. (I acknowledge that people differ in what they think rights are, but that's a different discussion.) I also think it's OK to tax to fund programs that shouldn't be funded in the long run, while you're in the process of phasing them out; I'm not for changing things drastically overnight.
That said, I think it's wrong to think that the government can invest money more wisely or efficiently than the people who have earned it can, and I think it's morally wrong to take money from people (like wait staff--note that doing this materially hurts their pursuit of their own goals and happiness) for government boondoggle.
That seems like an implementation issue rather than a philosophical issue? Tax could be spent with high efficiency, and is in other countries with less bureaucracy and corruption. I wouldn't throw out the idea of income tax because the US happens to have a poor system. The same could be said for democracy, the US having a fairly poor implementation, but no one is seriously suggesting the US stop being a democracy.
The problem with this line of argument is the moral base it stands on: pure utilitarianism.
It stands on the idea that the tax is more effective to leevy and that it will produce less suffering (to the rich that pay it). But unfortunately, reality shows you the actual utilitarian application: the rich spend lots of resources to avoid, lobby and protect themselves from taxation, making it hard to grab and cause lot of apparent pain.
But a sales tax on food, and a tax on income hits the poor, which can't defend themselves as well, and don't perceive the pain attributable to the tax.
If your stance is that taxes should be utilitarian, you already have an application.
I'm a libertarian, so I have systemic/ideological objections to taxes in general, but from a pragmatic point of view: taxes on voluntarily consumed luxuries are better than involuntary taxes. especially if the consumers of those luxuries are imposing negative externalities via scialized medicine.
If you’re going down this route, many will argue that all forms of income tax are equally “wrong”.
Henry George - a 19th century political economist - proposed exactly this, and suggested the only thing that should be taxed should be land: impossible to hide from a tax inspector, potentially a waste to the public commons if useful land that could be exploited isn’t and you can even protect land you wish to keep pristine more easily (tax it very, very highly).
His ideas are now considered eccentric, but I do wonder if the World would be a great deal simpler if globally we moved to a Henry George system and stopped trying to tax sales, income and everything else going we do.
The latter is IMO not ethical if it excessively punishes productive activity. In this case “impractical is unethical”, even as I’d prefer a UBI world in many ways.
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