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Comment by arlort | Hacker News Reader

> why the EU is so pro it

It's mostly a non issue in european politics tbh, the debate tends to be at the National level on the specific rate. But abolishing it outright is not something that is really discussed

> why left leaning governments don’t get rid of it

Because if you cut taxes you need to also cut benefits?

VAT is easy to apply and makes tax evasion harder. What's there that would make left-leaning legislatures remove it?

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Sales tax is a regressive tax which affects the poor more, so operating on pure ideology a left wing government would want to cut sales tax and replace with higher income tax.

However even the left wing EU governments that exist don't have unlimited time and goodwill, so most of them will leave that alone rather than get the bad PR from raising more visible taxes or cutting services to compensate.

Yes - certainly the Uk experience in the Thatcher era was to reduce income tax by increasing sales taxes. (The overall tax burden for the average family increased slightly over Margaret Thatcher’s administration). Subsequent labour governments didn’t/couldn’t reverse the process.

Referring to VAT as a less visible tax is ... a take, consumption taxes are around 20% of total tax income in the OECD, you'd have to tax income a lot more to make up for that, it's not really viable. (Income and profit taxes currently make up 33% for comparison)

And the effects on lower incomes gets mitigated by transfers and support programs and that tends to be good enough for left leaning legislatures

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