One aspect of a carbon tax (or the tax discussed in the podcast) is a steady tax increase. I guess the intended function is to have the tax revenue stay the same even with declining carbon use. Hopefully carbon tax revenue would go to zero, but I'm sure there would be other things to tax when that happens.

Initially when the parent comment mentioned the income tax, I didn't remember that it would be used to offset a carbon tax. Their point about discouraging work made sense and was the thing I remembered.