Re:Hungary Internet tax cancelled after mass protests
by SilasX on Friday October 31, 2014 @02:42PM
(#8540385)
As the saying goes, the art of taxation is to pluck as many feathers from the goose with it flocking away.
So in practice, governments will try to tax anything that's "easy" to tax -- i.e. generate revenue while not making people protest, flee, or hide it in the black market. So you see a lot of taxes on heavily monitored, hard-to-hide, hard-to-do-without stuff, like fuel, real estate, cars, and income.[1]
There isn't much logic to it beyond, "hey this is an easy way to get revenue". And in this case, it got unusual blowback.
With that said, the political support for a tax is indeed governed by considerations of justice or "who should pay", and in this case, the answer came in the negative.
[1] Not everyone owns cars or real estate, but they use them in some way.
So in practice, governments will try to tax anything that's "easy" to tax -- i.e. generate revenue while not making people protest, flee, or hide it in the black market. So you see a lot of taxes on heavily monitored, hard-to-hide, hard-to-do-without stuff, like fuel, real estate, cars, and income.[1]
There isn't much logic to it beyond, "hey this is an easy way to get revenue". And in this case, it got unusual blowback.
With that said, the political support for a tax is indeed governed by considerations of justice or "who should pay", and in this case, the answer came in the negative.
[1] Not everyone owns cars or real estate, but they use them in some way.