Hacker News Reader

Comment by ErikVandeWater | Hacker News Reader

Friendly reminder that income taxes are still an awful idea. They disincentivize making income, and income is a wonderful thing. They also make it easy for the top .1% to avoid paying taxes better than the top 10%.

Progressive taxes can still be achieved, through property taxes, sales taxes on luxury goods, and taxes on excessive usage of public goods.

View on HN

Income taxes only "disincentivize making income" for those who don't understand how marginal taxation works.

I would argue the exact opposite. Understanding how marginal taxes work is the perfect reason to stop working so hard to climb the ladder.

But in reality, income taxes mostly contribute shifting income to non income benefits for employees.

Sales taxes on luxury goods are often easy to avoid. When I bought an engagement ring, the jeweler offered to ship an empty box to Florida in order to avoid my states sales tax.

That is not tax avoidance, that is tax evasion (former is legal, latter is illegal). Pretty much all states with sales taxes require residents to pay "sales and use tax" on items purchased out of state that have been brought into the state for the amount of sales tax that would have been paid had it been purchased within the state.

https://floridarevenue.com/taxes/taxesfees/pages/sales_tax.a...

Florida used to allow online businesses not based in florida to forego collecting sales tax when shipping to florida (but it was always owed as use tax by the Florida resident recipient), but starting last year, businesses with more than $100k of online sales had to start collecting and remitting sales taxes also.

What are your thoughts on the land value tax

The land value tax is a good idea, assuming there is a tax on the pollution created when building the property. Unfortunately, there usually isn't one. A property tax is kind of a substitute for that tax.

There should be that tax because bigger and more luxurious properties usually cut down more trees to clear space, and usually use building materials that are pollutive/environmentally destructive than commonplace materials.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com