[fulafel]

Many essentials like food and bus tickets have lowered (or zero) tax rates, and it's printed on every receipt you get. Not really regressive or hidden.

Taxing wealth has big problems with transparency and evasion.

Progressive taxation is not a means to an end, just one mechanism to implement income redistribution. See eg basic income proposals with flat income tax.

But a worrying trend in EU lately has been to cut payroll taxes and raise VAT and other consumption taxes without compensating them in transfers, a combination which does hurt income equality.

[toyg]

> Many essentials like food and bus tickets have lowered (or zero) tax rates

That's charity, not progressive taxation. Besides, VAT is fixed-rate, which makes it regressive in practice.

> it's printed on every receipt you get

But nobody is taught how it works, in school or elsewhere, and unless you run your own business you'll never find out. Also, because it's segmented, atomic changes to different segments are usually reported under "business news" (unless it's for stuff like petrol and tobacco), the sort of thing most readers will skip. Honestly, the more you look into VAT, the more you see how it's always been used to raise taxes on employees without making them aware.

> Taxing wealth has big problems with transparency and evasion

Preying on the weak is obviously easier, that's always been the case. It doesn't make it right.

> a combination which does hurt income equality.

Amen.

[iopq]

It's not possible to tax wealth. Unless you want to tell me how many Bitcoins I own.

[toyg]

I'm a State actor. I can hire detectives that will go through the blockchain and monitor your traffic, and I'll likely get a fair approximation of how many bitcoins you have. Or you can just tell me when asked, as a good law-obeying citizen should do.

This is how all tax works, btw. Income tax is nothing but a wealth tax limited to wealth accumulated over a certain period. There is nothing impossible about it.

[iopq]

What traffic? They're stored on my hard drive. I don't fire up the client. I don't buy things with them. I just sit on them.

[toyg]

Ok, I'll make it easy then and just sequester your hard drive. Oh, it's encrypted and you won't give me the key? I'll throw you in jail.

[iopq]

How do you know to target me?