[melling]

Why would you ever think adding additional taxes to other products is the best way to make up for a government deficit? Certainly makes things more complicated and may have unintended consequences. Shouldn't we be trying to simplify the system?

Anyway, I'm not economist either. Perhaps it's best if someone could referred to economic theory, instead of what feels right.

[d2vid]

We tax income, even though we agree that income is a good thing.

Why not tax cigarettes, soda, pollution, and other bad things. The dead-weight loss from the tax is actually a good thing in these cases.

Agreed that there are always unintended consequences, I don't really know for sure, and democracy is unfortunately usually about feelings.

[cortesoft]

Every tax will do two things: raise revenue and modify behavior. Usually, the purpose of the tax is the former, but you need to remember that the latter will still happen.

In the case of income tax, you raise revenue but you change behavior in a negative way (discouraging work). If you instead tax vices and consumption, you can raise money while not causing negative behavior changes (and maybe instead causing good behavior changes).

However, as the parent comment pointed out, you have to really look deeply at a tax to figure out how it will affect behavior. It won't always be in the desired way.