Oh I see. Yeah, certainly there's merit in that, but it can be a challenge communicating it effectively. For example, Canada now has a nominal carbon tax that's revenue neutral— all the revenues go into an upfront rebate that's doled out on a per-head basis with a slightly greater amount if you're rural vs urban. All this seems perfectly reasonable and is aligned with what economists recommend as far as ensuring that the system isn't subject to partisan criticisms or whatever else.

But if you actually look at the rhetoric around it, the right wing party that's in opposition slams it as being a "cash grab" and a "tax on everything" that makes life more unaffordable for everyday Canadians. Literally one of the main planks of their platform this election is scrapping a revenue-neutral tax in order to help Canadian families "get ahead".

So was there any value in going to the trouble of doing the rebate? AFAICT claiming the tax was revenue neutral mostly just opened up the gov't to a ridiculous semantic argument about whether it was truly revenue neutral given that sales tax was being applied after the carbon tax. Maybe it would have been easier to just impose the tax and then pair it with an income tax cut or some kind of investment in existing social safety net programmes?