I don't think that is actually the closest you could get, even ignoring that you're asserting two wildly different things should necessary be equivalent. But even so: Do you literally never take any deductions at all? Never expense anything? No mortgage or whatever? Have zero capital gains income of any kind an in turn never have any losses of any kind there? You just add up all income sources and simply pay the top rate off the sticker price and ignore all the rest? I mean, it's not impossible or illegal to do such a thing and pay more if you want to, but I think you'd be somewhat in the minority there. Even personal income taxes at least haltingly, imperfectly and politically try to take somewhat into account that there are certain expenses necessary for humans to live or that further societal goals and that if after paying those someone has little left over then the tax system should take that into account.

>why should I as a person be taxed...[differently from business]

Humans and businesses aren't the same thing, businesses (like government) are a tool composed of and serving humans. It is a structure for dealing with and directing flows of capital towards human decided ends, and all money that goes through it ultimately ends up in the hands of humans as income upon which it is taxed there too anyway. A "business" has direct societal costs in terms of corporate law and such, but it does not need to ever use an ambulance or get housing or food support or whatever. Taxes on business, separate from the humans that compose said business, should be for dealing with business specific requirements, cost internalization, and so on. It makes absolutely no sense to simply tax a business the same as a human, not even if you are simultaneously proposing not taxing any of the humans involved. If it's done be prepared for perverse consequences. If a business has high revenue with genuinely 3% margins that still represents a huge amount of money flowing from and too various humans (including all the employees, all suppliers and contractors, their employees, and on), "revenue" is still taxed somewhere. But if you then simply slap a tax on the revenue again and make the margin go negative now the business dies, simple as that, and all the flows cease. Is that actually your intention? Why not just seize it then and take it all for the government directly?

If you want to argue that the income flows going to humans are themselves ultimately not taxed fairly, that is not merely doable but I think fairly widely agreed at this point. And if you want to argue that specifically and properly assessed business income taxes should not be possible to evade as so many do sure, that too happily seems to be inching forward. But you seem to be going a lot more radical and just throwing out everything.

If you don't need or want shelter then why are you paying the rent? Clearly the landlord is providing something of value to you.

> The social utility of taxation is simply that in a democracy, the people can decide what they need.

Nonsense. People can decide what they need perfectly well in the absence of taxation. It isn't a prerequisite for fair arbitration, travel, or health care either—all of these things have at one point or another been provided without any government involvement whatsoever.

Maybe in the 19th century, where this idea originated. Economics of business have changed too significantly to use it as a one size fits all taxation scheme.

It may have made sense when revenue was somewhat proportional to the amount of land a business occupied, but that no longer holds true in the age of skyscrapers and digital revenue generation.

An internet company in a 10-story building would love this scheme, though, because they could generate billions in revenue but be taxed at the same rate as a local neighborhood of people who owned their homes for a few decades.

Land-only taxes may have been an interesting idea in the 19th century, but they aren’t relevant to a modern economy.

It happens all the time, it's called property taxes.

aka, you want a wealth tax that you yourself are not subject to, in order to pay for services that you yourself _do_ utilize. Implied here is that these services would be paid for by such a wealth tax, and thus, your own tax is either reduced, or used to pay for even more services which you can utilize.

This is just another way to frame a selfish desire, but making it sound good because it targets somebody rich. A populous opinion imho.

Tax should be levied fairly. Wealth tax is not a fair tax. The current tax system is pretty progressive, and there just needs to be patches to the loopholes, rather than institute wealth tax, which just causes inconveniences for the wealthy at best, and causes them to move their wealth at worst (leading to worse economic outcomes).

Not quite. I can see what I’m getting back from the city for the property taxes on my home (or on my office).

It’s less clear to me what the city or government contributes to my company. I’m more inclined to say that its existence is a public service.

> The idea behind taxes is that you use some public resource and you pay for that service. You own a home in a neighborhood, you pay property tax that funds the schools. You drive a car, you pay gasoline tax that funds the streets. You hire workers locally, you pay the tax to pay back all the contributions public institutions made to adding the skills to the worker.

Taxation is used to encourage activities the govt thinks are beneficial to society, and discourage activities that are detrimental. In the US, married couples and those with children get tax breaks. This in spite of the fact that children use government services, accruing greater public costs. However the powers that be find it beneficial to encourage marriage and family building, I suppose because it hypothetically leads to greater stability and encourages more long term participation in the economy (can't quit your job and travel the world if you have kids to support).

So in short yes, the government can and does tax (or exempt from tax) whatever or whoever it wants, within the limits of the country's constitution and their courts' interpretation thereof. There is no requirement that it be directly correlated to a service the government provides.

Leveling the playing field wrt the inherent advantages that a large tech firm benefits from (economies of scale) does seem to be within the reasonable purview of a government which wants to protects its constituents from a tendency of the free market towards monopolization. This tax encourages competition by smaller players, which keeps Amazon honest. It is only not necessary if you trust Amazon to always act in the best interests of the consumer even after stamping out all competition.

That’s a great basis for not charging a tax.

> … especially when that tax is a tiny fraction of the actual value of the property.

How does that justify a tax?

I don't see it as double taxing.

The money the company makes and the money the people make are two different streams of income and capital.

You are not taxing the people twice. You are taxing them once and the company once. A company is an entity in itself and it has a cash-flow, revenues, profits, expenditures and savings all of its own, separate to the people it employs.

It also uses up land in entirely separate way to the people it employs.

Ever heard of sales tax?

In my town, in addition to the normal local taxes, there is a special greenery fee/tax that all residents must pay. It is only $25/year. The purpose is to pay the upkeep of all the green spaces which there are many. I happily pay this because I like to walk through these green spaces. Individually there is no way that $25/year would pay for that, but collectively the town can afford to and it improves living here for all the residents.

There are of course many examples where tax money is not used wisely, but there are also many examples where it is. We should get better at spending it wisely which is of course easier said than done. But to say that taxes are like throwing money into the abyss just doesn't stack up to the data.

Why not tax all of that simultaneously? That's what the Dutch do.

> I don't think it is desirable to force realization just to increase tax revenue.

And yet various governments are doing or are planning exactly that.

I don't think this is true at all, even if we accept that all wants and needs are good ones (opiods, for instance). I pay a substantial portion of my income in rent. That's not because my landlord is satisfying my wants or needs. Far from it. Actually, he's the most miserable, difficult person I regularly have to deal with. However, because land is a natural monopoly, I have to suck it up. There are many, many companies that work like this.

The social utility of taxation is simply that in a democracy, the people can decide what they need. Notable achievements of this system include stuff like courts, roads, and (in some countries) efficient, affordable healthcare.

That’s an intriguing comment. Can you explain further?

Heartily disagree. Pigovian taxes are fantastically persuasive.

Initially, I was going to argue that the existence of random taxes on car rentals and other mostly benign services is already an arbitrary unfair practice for state governments to raise more revenue.

Then I looked at my own state's, Colorado's, rental tax - it's $2 on top of sales tax which seems pretty reasonable. $2 seems pretty reasonable and small to the overall rental cost especially when tha artical says they can add up to an extra 30% on the car. Would I be happier if the extranalities of car rentals were collected some other way? Absolutely but I don't think the extra $2 is what car rentals are complaining about.

If the users of these apps are cheating and not paying the sales tax and rental tax, then the rental companies have a 100% valid point but I have a hard time thinking they just want these ride sharing/lending apps.

On the other hand, I would much rather have no random excise taxes on arbitrary services and more taxes on the actual externalites they produce such as taxes on fuel and conjestion pricing in dense areas.

I don't think it's about rules ("gotta"), it's about ethics. I wouldn't say that maximizing taxes is anything, but the desire to minimize taxes is definitely anti-social.

IMO this is a fundamental misapprehension. The idea behind taxes isn't to compensate the state for resources consumed. The idea is that the state can tax you, so it does, to use that money for whatever its priorities are.

This is kind of a "purpose of a system is what it does" viewpoint on taxation, but I think it's also the most accurate. If you look at it from any other perspective, you're going to see weird inconsistencies like rich people paying more than they consume, deductions that don't match corresponding benefits provided to the public, etc.

And it doesn't sound appealing to me, as an individual. I don't want to feel like a peasant constantly paying a tax to the monarch/state: so at very least the first property an individual owns should be tax free (not annual land value tax / property tax). I happen to live in a country where that's the case (but it's not the reason I moved there): no yearly property tax.