The general principle of a tax which can be levied fairly, equally, clearly, and with low costs of collection or effort, are not new:

The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary. The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person. Where it is otherwise, every person subject to the tax is put more or less in the power of the tax-gathered, who can either aggravate the tax upon any obnoxious contributor, or extort, by the terror of such aggravation, some present or perquisite to himself. The uncertainty of taxation encourages the insolence and favours the corruption of an order of men who are naturally unpopular, even where they are neither insolent nor corrupt. The certainty of what each individual ought to pay is, in taxation, a matter of so great importance that a very considerable degree of inequality, it appears, I believe, from the experience of all nations, is not near so great an evil as a very small degree of uncertainty.

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 2, Part 2: Of Taxes.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/...

Smith's preference was for a tax on land, which is difficult to move off-shore.

About arbitrary taxation, I understand that's how they handled it in ancient Athens. Some nobody would say something like "It's been a while since we taxed the Alcmaenids, I propose they pay for the next Panathanea festival".

Since that state was radically democratic, it may not have had the corrupting influence on the taxers as Smith suggests... but maybe it was a factor in the aristocrats allying with their rival Sparta to topple their own constitution.

In Athen's case I don't think it technically counted as corruption in the "misappropriation" sense as the intended beneficiaries received it. Given the number of votes to "pillage and enslaved their neighbors" it would certainly count morally if not for the fact it was "the norm".

At that point the difference between bandits and city state military was essentially just diplomacy in terms of how their neighbors and survivors would react to somebody putting killing or enslaving them.

> Smith's preference was for a tax on land, which is difficult to move off-shore.

I like the idea of land tax, but I like that statement even more. (Land tax, on paper, seems like it would be such a good idea, and transaction taxes are nowadays so invasive, that it's incomprehensible to me why we don't have them.)

Thanks. It just came to me :)

Not who you replied to, however modern taxation requires lots of information to work. For instance income tax works, because every employer is reporting how much they paid you. Then you report how much money you got paid, then factor in deductions such as specific contributions to charities etc. All of which are reporting to the Government at the same time.

Before the advent of computing and auditing it would be hard to tell if a blacksmith sold 50 or 55 swords. So income tax wasn't viable and instead taxation on lands were more common.

HK raises practically all of its revenue from land and (until China started screwing it up) it was one of the richest, most developed places on Earth.

>HK raises practically all of its revenue from land

I don't know what you mean. Hong Kong is a trading port, and any wealth it "creates" is done by refining imported materials. This option is only available someplace lots of trade naturally occurs, like Hong Kong's river basin.

I mean the government raises its tax revenue almost exclusively by leasing land and taxing real estate transactions instead of taxing income like we do in the West.

This system isn't very exportable, I can't imagine the nationalization of land being a popular move no matter how low you promised to make income tax.

Okay and?

My point is that to collect property tax it's easier for the Government and Income tax is harder for the Government. It requires more reporting...

It has nothing to do with the value extracted.

My point is you don't need income tax at all to maintain a developed society as demonstrated in HK, Washington State, etc.