ire.net...
On 2005-09-16, Icebound wrote:

That is exactly how it *is* "relevant". Your example has added 12USD of
taxes to the consumer. If that 12USD was not collected from the
consumer,
the equivalent would have to be collected from the workers. You have
changed the distribution of the taxation load.

Your thesis presumes workers are not consumers.

I operate a one man business. Is this a corporation? Yes, Do I/we pay
taxes? Yes. Do I work? Yes. Do I consume? Yes.

You are a corporation, but you are also a "small" business... this is a very
different issue than that of my reference. I made it pretty clear in an
earlier post that where the worker, shareholder, consumer were pretty much
the same population, it does not much matter how the government gets its
revenue.

But if the shareholders are a substantially large and different population
than the workers, for example: if the shareholders were foreigners (or tax
sheltered entities), then it makes a great *deal* of difference as to
whether we tax the corporation's pre-dividend profits, or whether we tax the
worker's wages, to get the same level of government revenue.

I am not arguing taxing one as opposed to the other as being good or bad....
just that it makes a difference as to how the two populations share the
total tax burden.




Governments know that if all your taxes (income, property, consumption,
excise, et al) were bundled on a single bill that there *would* be a
tax revolt. Decentralization of collection is key to maximum
extraction.

Your presumption that "...would have to be collected..." presumes
society is better off with government consuming substantial fractions of
the workers production.

No. What it *does* presume is that there is no difference in the revenue
stream to the government. Whether the government actually *needs* that
revenue stream was not the point of the discussion.