Subject:
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Re: stuff (was: Art Debate Was: [Re: Swearing?])
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 19 Jan 2000 12:34:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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2666 times
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On Tue, 18 Jan 2000 16:59:04 GMT, Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net>
wrote:
> Any tax, across the board, incents some behaviours and disincents
> others. Broadly, there seem to be at least three classes of taxation,
> although there may be others. These are:
>
> Income - a tax on the production of wealth
> Sales - a tax on the consumption of wealth
> Property - a tax on the possession of wealth.
>
> (VAT can be argued to be a 4th kind of tax, or one can argue that it is
> a combination of Income and Sales. I haven't made up my mind. If it's a
> 4th kind, it seems to be taxing the adding of value to things, which I'd
> argue is a kind of "production of wealth" but let's not get distracted)
VAT in practice, though, is more of a sales tax except that companies
don't pay it. What happens is that everybody charges VAT on
everything, which is to be transferred through to the government, but
companies get any VAT they have paid back.
Mostly, it's a way of making sure that sales tax is paid only once on
a given (part of) a product during its cycle of production, unlike a
straight sales tax where every time things pass throuigh the hands of
a subcontractor they get taxed.
> activities. (and other activities that don't fall into any of the three
> categories... Is fornication production or consumption? :-) )
Both, I'd say. Though in the Red Light District it's likely to be
Consumption and Production very specifically for the two people
respectively.
> My claim is this: the more specific a tax is, or the more exemptions it
> has, the more distortive it is, and the more it replaces pure economic
> decisions with decisions that take into account the tax in effect.
What is the reasoning behind this? Why is a 40% straight sales tax on
everything less distortive than, say, a 5% sales tax except on food?
> The US income tax, to this free marketeer, is particularly pernicious
> because it is a maze of special cases, exemptions, credits and
> penalties, and because the net result is that two people, making exactly
> the same income, can arrange their affairs so that one pays a lot of tax
> and the other hardly any.
> But, broadly, if one MUST incent behaviours, what I would prefer to
> incent would be production and what I would prefer to disincent would be
> consumption.
Why? Production without consumption == inflation. That's not a good
thing.
> For, if we want to have any non neutral effect, we wish to encourage
> production and savings at the expense of consumption. At least that's my
> view.
Hmm. Strange. Economic theory and practice in the US has always been
to encourage consumption, and let that do the work. It hasn't exactly
been a big failure, has it?
> Thanks for the pointer. I may know what it is I want to know more than
> you do, but I suspect, my Dutch being what it is(1), you know more of
> what it says than I do. Is the english version complete? I did some
Less complete than I thought, it seems.
> digging and I did not see anything that would answer the original
> question about sources of government revenue by tax type. But I was just
> browsing cursorily.
I know it is there _somewhere_, because I've seen it before. Aargh.
http://www.cbs.nl/nl/cijfers/kerncijfers/kov0475a.htm
Unavailable in English :(
Rough translations offered:
gld per inwoner: Guilders per inhabitant
Inkomstenbelasting: Income tax
Loonbelasting: Income tax, done the other way
Vennootschapsbelasting: Tax on profits of companies
Omzetbelasting: tax on the amount of money that goes around a company
Dividendbelasting: taxes on dividends
Vermogensbelasting: Property tax
Motorrijtuigenbelasting: Tax on motor-carrying ve-hikkels
BPM: I haven't a clue, actually.
Overdrachtsbelasting: Taxes on transferring property
Accijnzen: Assises, as seen on alcohol
Verbruiksbelasting op een milieugrondslag: taxes for the environmental
impact of actions, based on "polluter pays"
Overige: Other
HTH.
Jasper
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: stuff (was: Art Debate Was: [Re: Swearing?])
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| (...) Any tax, across the board, incents some behaviours and disincents others. Broadly, there seem to be at least three classes of taxation, although there may be others. These are: Income - a tax on the production of wealth Sales - a tax on the (...) (25 years ago, 18-Jan-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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