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by tylerhou 1816 days ago
You're right that you don't need to compensate for harms with such a tax (so my first sentence was imprecise). But I also don't see what's wrong with attempting to distribute (some of) the revenue in such a way to compensate for harms.
2 comments

> But I also don't see what's wrong with attempting to distribute (some of) the revenue in such a way to compensate for harms.

It becomes a big political fight over how much of the revenue should be directed to social programs, so the tax policy changes every 4 years. A straight rebate gets wide support and taking it away becomes more and more unpopular as people get used to receiving it.

Because the attempt causes the laws to fail in referendum perhaps.