that would incredibly regressive. it's an awful idea
It’s actually a great idea.
In any case in practice this is obviously not done, as cigarettes, alcohol, food, basic online purchases etc have sale taxes.
And yes it is done. Food, clothes, toiletries aren’t tax in most states in the US or Canada.
Of course alcohol and tobacco aren’t exempted. You’re trying to discourage use not encourage it.
If you exempt the necessities of living (food, etc) I’d suggest the rich would be tax on a far bigger percentage of income than the poor.
And even if they didn’t spend it, any capital gains or interest income would still be taxed too.
And you’re ignoring the fact that a consumption tax would capture spending from black market income as well. Expanding the pool of income taxes.
The post you are responding to is talking about getting rid of income taxes. Those are income taxes.
It is also a pretty distortive tax, and it creates smuggling, robbery, and disproportionally punishes those that consume those products and are also on the poorer spectrum.
Zucman and Saez have a decent figure for this, which this article in the Atlantic includes as a high resolution version [1] or a non paywall one at [2]. People quibble with the details here (particularly post taxes and transfers like social security), but much of the income and much of the wealth is in the top 10%. The bottom 90% basically saves nothing, and while many at the true bottom decile / quintile spend it only on the goods you would exclude, you still end up with “we can’t tax wealthier people, without being regressive” for most of the middle.
For example, car payments, home sales, electronics. These are all “normal” things for most people, so unless you want to raise taxes on the bottom 50% or so (who currently do not pay much in income taxes), you have to exempt a much wider variety of goods.
What does that leave you with? Yachts? Cars over a certain amount? Houses over a certain amount? It’s not impossible to figure out how to do it, but you then get to pile on import taxes (“Fine. I’ll buy my yacht in the Bahamas and sail it here rather than pay 10x in taxes”) and so on.
Fundamentally, in designing a taxation system, you’re deciding how to fund the government and redistribute wealth. It turns out that spending, even of non basic goods, isn’t a good proxy of what an individual can afford to contribute without noticing. Income isn’t perfect, but spending is actually pretty bad.
1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article...
[2] https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-average-savings-rates-b...
Add on top capital gains and you're collecting the same or more than you are now.
P.S. I don’t think when people call for “just sales tax” they also mean “oh and sure plus capital gains” (besides, this would just shift back towards dividends).