Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!mason
From: mason@tmsoft.uucp (Dave Mason)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: A ?new? Proposal (was Re: Tax Revolt Now!!)
Message-ID: <1989Aug15.135601.12057@tmsoft.uucp>
Date: 15 Aug 89 13:56:01 GMT
References: <1989Aug14.231027.11461@lsuc.on.ca>
Reply-To: mason@tmsoft.UUCP (Dave Mason)
Followup-To: can.general
Organization: TM Software Associates, Toronto
Lines: 31

In article <1989Aug14.231027.11461@lsuc.on.ca> dave@lsuc.on.ca (David Sherman) writes:
>[...]
>I see a lot of proposals for tax changes, and they come from
>the Department of Finance, not from "big business".
>[...]
>I agree that sales taxes are regressive.  On the other hand,
>most industrialized countries rely on a form of VAT, which is
>what the GST is.  One of the goals of the change is to reduce
>the extent to which the tax system distorts business and investment
>decisions, and the GST should result in less distortion.

This discussion raised a couple of alternatives in my mind to the
current smorgasbord of taxes.  Perhaps Dave Sherman can comment on
whether these ideas have been tried or are in use elsewhere.

1) Has any serious consideration ever been given to having ALL revenue
collected through a (progressive) personal income tax.  Cancel all sales
taxes, user fees, etc.  It would be MUCH cheaper to collect.  The top
rate would probably be 60%-70%, but at least you'd see all the
taxation in one place, and the government could tune the
progressiveness of the tax as appropriate.

2) We will soon have the hardware in place that we could have a
capital transfer tax.  If all `money' where kept in computers & we
used a debit card to buy everything from a house to a corporation to a
bubble gum, the government could skim some small amount (1-5%) off
EVERY transfer of money.  The costs of collection would be even lower,
it would be relatively painless, and in some sense it would be very
fair.

	../Dave