Re:The Undermining of American Charity
by logfromblammo on Wednesday August 31, 2016 @12:50PM
(#12399682)
You are abusing the definitions of words, here.
A tax is an effectively positive tax rate. A subsidy is an effectively negative tax rate. A tax rate which is effectively zero is neither strictly positive nor strictly negative, so is neither tax nor subsidy.
In order to make the argument you seem to be making, you must be holding government revenues from taxes to be constant, which makes tax cuts and tax increases a zero-sum game. If someone is taxed less, someone else must be taxed more. But I do not agree with your assumption that the government seeks to keep its revenue from any one particular tax constant when considering changes to tax law, or that it must necessarily even consider the revenue impact at all.
The goal in this particular case actually seems to be to influence the behavior of those who pay the tax in a particular way, and the revenue is mainly a pleasant (for them) afterthought.
A tax is an effectively positive tax rate. A subsidy is an effectively negative tax rate. A tax rate which is effectively zero is neither strictly positive nor strictly negative, so is neither tax nor subsidy.
In order to make the argument you seem to be making, you must be holding government revenues from taxes to be constant, which makes tax cuts and tax increases a zero-sum game. If someone is taxed less, someone else must be taxed more. But I do not agree with your assumption that the government seeks to keep its revenue from any one particular tax constant when considering changes to tax law, or that it must necessarily even consider the revenue impact at all.
The goal in this particular case actually seems to be to influence the behavior of those who pay the tax in a particular way, and the revenue is mainly a pleasant (for them) afterthought.