[curt]

Sales Taxes are the least economically destructive of all taxes. If a government's goal to optimize economic growth they should eliminate income, property, capital, etc taxes are replace them with a sales/consumption tax. Bobby Jindal proposed this in Louisiana.

[lbarrow]

Sales taxes are also regressive: poor people spend a higher percentage of their income than rich people, so any tax on spending will affect poor people more than rich people.

[Retric]

Sales Taxes are vary economically destructive as unlike income tax they artificially shift the economy from real goods to services. The only way to avoid this is to tax all spending and gift giving which ends up being just another income tax.

[vbuterin]

> from real goods to services

Hence inventions like Canada's "goods and services" tax.

[mikeash]

What makes sales tax better than other taxes in this regard?

[protomyth]

It's fairly easy to collect (like gas taxes) since you're dealing with a set of vendors and not the whole population.