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Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by himinlomax on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @07:10AM (#22246050)
Best way to do it I've ever seen is the automated transactions tax, whereby you replace most taxes with a small percentage taken on every financial transaction (plus a larger one when converting to/from cash to account for the black economy).

It's progressive because poor people will only pay twice (once on their salary/benefits, once when buying stuff), whereas rich people will pay several times when moving money around.

Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by organsnyder on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @08:28AM (#22246516)
Expect a new class of companies to spring up overnight that are dedicated to bundling transactions to avoid this new tax. For instance, I could make a single transaction to my broker that covered all of my expected expenditures for the month, and that broker would then disburse it to my payees, bundling it with funds from other payers to avoid the tax on the other end.

I am strongly in favor of a tax on all stock market transactions, though—anything to deter HFT, which IMHO has little societal benefit while externalizing a ton of risk.

Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by gamblor956 on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @10:47AM (#22247768)
Wouldn't work. Tax law can tell the difference between an individual transaction and bundled transactions. It's also the only area of law that allows for ex post facto changes to the criminality of acts.
Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by himinlomax on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @11:33AM (#22248364)
Tax law already handles much more complex schemes. Admittedly nowhere near perfectly, but then this scheme being simple frees up resources for policing, and the tax code being much simpler makes it less easy to exploit.
Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by Scoundreller on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @07:48AM (#22246273)
Why tax the income side when you could just tax the consumption side?
Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by pjmorris on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @08:46AM (#22246635)
Taxing consumption is regressive; Bill Gates can't eat that many more hamburgers than the average person.
Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by Scoundreller on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @10:11AM (#22247324)
Write everyone a cheque.

Taxing income is quite regressive too: it’s how people with nothing can survive.

Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by himinlomax on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @11:39AM (#22248436)
Taxing income at a few % as this scheme intends is not regressive.
Re:Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis by himinlomax on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @11:37AM (#22248405)
For simplicity's sake. All transactions are taxed equally, no way to evade it by making false or borderline claims about the nature of exchange, and no resource have to be wasted on optimizing or litigating them.