[kartan]

> I think it's unethical to tax anyone's income

How will you pay for a functional society then? All these people that are rich, it is rich because they live in very complex, healthy, educated societies. That does not come from the air.

How will you make sure that one person does not accumulate all world wealth? Without progressive taxation, wealth accumulates naturally as having more money makes it even easier to make even more money. How could such a system work?

I would like to understand your position. Why paying for the sustain the society where you live in is unethical?

[fit2rule]

Tax spending, not income.

Income tax is theft since it is the state usurping the will of the individual, and literally saps the agency one might have over ones progress - Expenditure tax is a better solution, since it allows the individual to maintain agency over their wealth, while also allowing the state to gain income on equal ground.

Really, its time for societies to evolve beyond state-supported theft through threat of force, and grant individuals more agency over how they use their wealth. The current system is criminal.

[zwaps]

This means you will have a regressive taxation scheme, where poor people have to pay a larger percentage of their income as tax, and rich people a very small percentage.

To be able to run a stable state that actually allows anyone to have opportunities, taxation would have to be pretty high. After all, you need well funded public schools, child services, police/emergency service and a health system at the very least - otherwise you just end up with a bisected society of rich and poor.

But then you need to have a high taxation rate on expenditure (most countries have a VAT, for example, and it would not be enough by itself). So again, this smothers the poors, and they could not, for example, gain wealth themselves.

Why does this imply that taxation is not theft?

I think the most important argument is, that people have accumulated their wealth in either of two ways. First, they did not earn it themselves. Then, one could reasonably argue that some taxation is fair. Second, they accumulated it themselves, such as by starting a business. Then you argue that taxation is theft. However, they earned their money in the existing society. Since they were not rich, they, at that time, used all public services, education, markets and stability provided by the system, while also paying relatively little. They are rich, in part because of a consumer surplus society affords by non-regressive taxation. It is therefore fair, and and not theft, that they are to pay more of their wealth, which they gained within a beneficial system of taxation, to keep that same system stable for the next generation.

[fit2rule]

>This means you will have a regressive taxation scheme, where poor people have to pay a larger percentage of their income as tax, and rich people a very small percentage.

Well, overlooking the obvious straw man argument, and ignoring that this has been successfully implemented already, in some of the most diverse poverty vs. wealth distribution countries in the world (India and Sri Lanka) .. this would only be the case if expenditure taxes weren't scaled to target the higher-end luxury items, but instead applied flat across society. Clearly, this is not the case with income tax - and it wouldn't be the case, necessarily, with an expenditure tax. Luxury items would be taxed at higher rates than basic life-survival items. Such a tax would be progressively or proportionally applied across society, such that the wealthy simply pay more for their luxuries, while the poor pay less for their essentials.

In a properly designed expenditure-tax system, people still get wealthy by hard work or inheritance/exploitation - but when they try to spend that wealth, they are equalised by the expenditure tax compared to the less wealthy.

And in this case its not theft, like income tax, because people still will have the choice on whether to spend their money, however it is earned, on luxury items (high tax rate) or survival items (low tax rate). The point is, they have the choice, and ~50% of their life is not spent just working for the state, as is the case with income tax repression.

The only issue, is that it is 'difficult to administer' - but I see no reason to make tax bureaucrats lives easier. We already have sales tax in many states - eradicating income tax would mean freeing resources up to expand the scope of those sales taxes into a broader taxation on expenditure.

Income tax results in people making the conscious decision to not make more money - because, after all, most of it will go to the government. Expenditure tax encourages people to save, and invest wisely in their local economy, and thus gives state managers the ability to direct those investments according to reduced tax rates around the commodities/services for which the state wants to promote growth.

The current mess is repressive. People consciously don't work to improve their conditions in life, when half of that life is given over, immediately, to the government. This causes a lot of resentment over society, and promotes criminal tax avoidance all over the scale.