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Comment by debo_ | Hacker News Reader

> I believe we should tax AI tokens and robots. Right now, if you’re an employer and you hire someone, you pay payroll taxes on their earnings. But if you buy a robot, you can usually write it off right away as a business expense. The tax system nudges you toward replacing people with machines.

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Taxing AI tokens and Robots is not going to work. We can’t even define a robot, tokens are also too abstract and there is endless ways of gaming it, and let’s not forget cross border operations.

Tax profits, it was always the most equitable option.

I do think taxing profits is still insufficient, because unless the tax rate is close to 100% (lol) the "k-shaped" economy is still reinforced, but just slowed slightly. In combination with a wealth/holdings tax, maybe.

Personally I think the idea of taxing robots/tokens directly is too narrow an idea.

It's undesirable by the companies, but it's not impossible. There's this constant talk about "Making American Great Again (Again)", but not much talk about the economic conditions that made America Great. Like high corporate tax.

That's half the battle. The other half is closing all the loopholes and making stuff that used to be illegal, illegal again (e.g. stock buybacks).

It is because personal income tax should have never existed. Nor should have taxes on primary residence. These are the most regressive taxes possible, it is basically serfdom.

Can you explain this? I think consumption taxes are the most regressive taxes possible because they are "flat" and thus affect lower-income people harder.

Marginal income taxes are regressive now in the sense that folks with more wealth have far more resources to avoid paying them, but otherwise the reasoning seems less regressive than a consumption tax (e.g. VAT)

Tax production as a whole, because profits get hidden in whatever is this week's tax haven. Taxing production has the added benefit of being able to drop every other tax tangentially related to revenue.

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