The central problem is the refusal of US governments (state & federal) to pay people money to do things they want to encourage rather than give them tax credits and whatnot.
When taxes are used as a means of control, that’s totalitarian. Tax policy should always be neutral.
1. give everyone who does X US$300
2. give everyone who does X a US$300 tax credit
However, 1. does not introduce any new clauses to the tax code. 2., by contrast does, and it generally functions as a slow steady drip, drip, drip of new clauses.
We therefore end up with an extremely complex tax code, instead of a simple tax code, and legislative acts to pay people for doing things we choose (via political process) that we want done.
It's too easy to make a company go bankrupt with LLC, so taxes are the only way. Unless you have a better idea? (I once had a libertarian explain to me the owners/investors should be liable for externalities, and in this case, taxes shouldn't control for it. I couldn't really disagree, but even staunch communists understand the issue with that).
The problem with this approach is all it does is it legitimises pollution/destruction/captation if you just pay a tax on it.
Not even a penalty for wrongdoing. Pay a tax and you’re fine.
Maybe there should be a tax rebate for smokers, so they can buy more cigarettes?
And “sin taxes”, i.e. tobbaco taxes and carbon taxes are a logical fallacy.
Tobacco tax won’t offset the additional healthcare costs for smokers on average, so it ends up just being a penalty for having a bad habit, and carbon tax will simply put a price tag on high carbon emissions.