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Comment by raldi | Hacker News Reader

"It's a regressive tax!" is the universal torpedo; you can use it to shoot down anything. Congestion pricing, parking meters, the gas tax, drought-driven price-of-water increases, fishing licenses, soccer field rental fees...

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You can base the fine on income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

I'm actually kind of surprised it's not more popular.

I've been wanting this for years, but their needs to be a upper fine limit. No one should get a $5000 ticket. That said, a $500 ticket can make some poor people loose their residence, or go without eating. I remember getting a high priced ticket in college, and my transmission went out on that day too. It ate up all my savings, and I seriously thought it's(college) is not worth it. I was working on the weekends at a union job, but barely getting by. It just doesn't make sense that a person's income isn't a factor in the fee structure. (My mom used to go to court and the judge would reduce the fee, but that was the 70's- 80's; I hear that tactic seldom works, or the reduction is not much?)

> No one should get a $5000 ticket.

Why not?

This http://www.businessinsider.com/a-millionaire-in-finland-got-...

seems pretty fair to me.

Because it creates a situation where it becomes stupidly risky to be affluent; people do make mistakes with e.g. speed limits - not everyone crosses them intentionally - and paying a € 50 000 fine for doing 21 km/h over a speed limit really makes people consider emigrating and taking their businesses to a more reasonable place. It also makes it more difficult to attract high-income workforce from abroad, thus having a negative impact on high-tech industries.

It just puts more pressure on people to move their wealth into corporations. How would you fine someone with no income or wealth, but who controls corporations that have plenty?

Also, a persons wealth has nothing to do with the crime. Punishment should be based on the crime, not on a person's status.

Ownership of corporations should show up as personal wealth. The corporate structure might slightly obfuscate the details, but if you try to hard to hide wealth in the corporation you quickly get to the point where fraud is being committed.

I guess you can have the corporation own the vehicle, but you get around that easily by fining the driver.

If person A and person B commit the same fineable offense, it seems fair to me that the fine should be the same for both people. After all, shouldn't the fine be, in expectation, equivalent to the damage caused by the offense?

Do you think that it would be a good idea to have a fixed amount tax? I'm not talking about a flat tax, I'm talking about making everyone pay the same amount.

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