Wait you live in a state with state income tax? I’m not sure why you’re willing to put up with that. You’re just being double taxed on your income.

Income tax is progressive; sales tax is regressive.

That is implementation specific. And oversimplified. An income tax is regressive if you only look within a tax bracket including the highest one which arguably contains the highest level of disparity within it (quantitatively, though perhaps not qualitatively). More so income tax on capital gains. Just the ability to have the majority of your income taxed as gains is regressive. Sales tax that are limited to luxury goods are progressive. Food assistance is often exempted from certain sales tax, which is progressive.

We can make either type of tax regressive, progressive, or vary by income level to push people toward the median lifestyle.

Implementation costs and the ease of avoidance should be larger concerns I think.

In Nevada there's no income tax, some sales tax, but the vast majority of taxable purchases are luxury purchases made by wealthy tourists and there's also a hotel room tax.

So in that one case, choosing sales tax isn't regressive.

I know and generally I agree with taxing income for this reason. “Double taxation” is a silly reason.

Agreed. Especially given the wide range of sales and income tax rates.

The double taxation criticism was about sales tax.

I know. Not only is it silly to call it a double tax, it’s also not even correct. Even in NH that money is taxed at least 3 other times before you spend it. Sales tax would be at least the 4th tax on the same money.

* Sales Tax

* Income Tax

* Property Tax

People in all states pay some combo of those 3. Some say no income tax (FL). But that means higher sales tax and property tax. Others have all 3 taxes, but in lower amounts.

Do you really think in New Hampshire you pay less total tax then someone like me, living in the Midwest? You likely do better than NY/Cali, but not the Midwest..

And for all practical purposes your social security is simply a tax as it goes into the exact same bucket as taxes.

True, though that is a federal tax. The 3 taxes I posted - I was referring to state and local level taxes.

Bragging about no sales tax while paying a higher income / property taxes was a pretty funny / American thing to do..

Tax laws are confusing and nonsensical everywhere.

Seems to me for local taxes land-value tax is clearly the most sensible. It aligns the intensives much better.

On state and federal level you can use flat or progressive income tax.

I don't understand why anybody would do sales or value added tax.

But recently I have been thinking if land-value tax for everything just didn't make sense.

So someone lives in a $400,000 RV in an RV park. They won't pay property tax. Say they are living inherieted money. They won't pay income tax. So sales tax would be their only tax.

Obviously this is a cherry picked example and can't represent but .1% of the population. But each lever you pull for tax rewards/punishes a different group. A famous example if FL has no income tax, letting retirees stretch their fixed pensions further.

In general, if a state has a lot of tourists coming to it. They won't get property tax nor income tax on the visitors, but they WILL get sales tax. So it makes sense to raise the sales tax, so that you can lower the property / income tax for people that live there yearround.

The RV park would pay land value tax and that would be financed by the rend of the RV park.

Tourists will make some locations more valuable then others, so it should have an impact on property tax.

We in Ohio also have literally all 3 at the same time.

I'd rather not deal with sales tax, gets annoying sometimes with cash.

Sales tax and income tax serve different purposes in most countries. And very little of that purpose is actually "raising" revenue - the federal government can in principle always print whatever money it needs and hand it out to states etc. But they do help ensure the fiat currency has irreplaceable value, that there's not excessive money in the system, and for income taxes also help smooth out inequalities. And it's often simpler or less fraught for state-level taxes to be used to supplement revenue raising rather than rely on federal government hand outs.

Lots of states have no income tax

Nine states have no personal income tax. Of those, South Dakota and Wyoming are the only states that don't have business income taxes. So, only those two states have no income tax.