When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer

Re:When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer by gambiting on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @09:11AM (#15174731)

Don't have income tax at all, tax every transaction 20%, like a flat rate VAT except that you can't claim it back on your business expenses. Simplify the entire tax system without having loads of brackets, exemptions and special cases - if you sell goods or services, 20% of that is paid as tax, end of story.

I mean, I am not an economist, I have no idea if that would work or not(probably not)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:When the Rich Said No to Getting Richer by MichaelBurge on Tuesday September 05, 2017 @09:16AM (#15174766)

The big problem there is that it encourages companies to grow as big as they possibly can, because "internal" transactions aren't taxed.

So Amazon would own the entire supply chain: Manufacturing widgets, selling widgets, storing widgets, shipping widgets, handling returns, etc. They already sort of do this, but if you add a 20% tax at each hop they would eliminate the remaining hops as fast as they possibly can or buy the hops.

And you could never start a small business, because everyone who'd want to buy from you would save a ton of money doing it themselves. By not taxing business transactions, it's zero additional cost to have someone else do something for you, so it makes it possible to grow a small business.

In particular, grocery stores with a 2% margin would be hit hard.

[ Parent | on HN ]