[mikhailfranco]

Consumption taxes and sin taxes.

Consumption tax is sales/VAT tax excluding some necessities and capital goods. Yes, there are some awkward edge cases: in the UK the exclusions were food and children's clothes, which leads to battles over prepared cold food (e.g. sandwich), takeaway and restaurant dining.

Sin taxes are obviously things society might want to discourage, mainly for health reasons, like alcohol and smoking, but also gambling and externalities, like pollution. Some might stretch that to all carbon emissions to moderate climate change.

Don't tax things you want: working / income and investment / capital gains.

Inheritance tax is doubly wrong because the wealth is already taxed, and death is unavoidable (but emigration is possible, which might help in some countries).

[ceejayoz]

Consumption taxes disproportionately impact the less wealthy, who spend most of what they earn on consumption of necessities.

> Don't tax things you want: working / income and investment / capital gains.

What if I don't want hoarding of wealth?

[aianus]

Canada just gives you a fixed amount of cash every year for the sales tax that they estimate that you paid on a regular amount of consumption (HST credit) which solved that problem.

I don't think it's fair that someone who earns $400k and spends $400k is paying roughly the same taxes as someone earning $400k and spending $100k. You should pay more taxes the more luxurious your life is, not the more productive you are.

[nofriend]

Where's the other 300k going? If you aren't spending it, what does it matter if it all gets taxed to nothing? And if you end up spending it, then boom there's your consumption that needs to be taxed.

[ycdeebs]

In a world where you are the supreme ruler, then what you individually want matters. In our actual world, it’s more about what the society in general wants.

[ceejayoz]

> In our actual world, it’s more about what the society in general wants.

God, if only!

In the actual world, it's more about what the powerful want.

Why do you think billionaires spent more fighting Mamdani than they stood to lose in new taxes?

[senordevnyc]

The powerful didn’t want this.