Many EU countries have a “VAT” and like feel like this is kinda targeting poor people. Like, for the rich, this is insignificant, for poorer people, a (example) 20% tax would be a huge burden. Why do they do this?
🤔
Many EU countries have a “VAT” and like feel like this is kinda targeting poor people. Like, for the rich, this is insignificant, for poorer people, a (example) 20% tax would be a huge burden. Why do they do this?
🤔
They also tax the rich through progressive income taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes etc.
If you’re asking why not just tax the rich in place of a VAT, well, it’s sort of why not tax the rich to pay for absolutely everything we could want. The costs and difficulties in taxing the rich generally scale to the point where the marginal revenue raised by the tax becomes negative.
So basically, you can only tax so much before the rich get mad and leave the EU? 🤔
More like the rich will get even more proficient in tax avoidance
No, EU member states handle taxes individually.
But, that ease of travel is one inducement. (Consider, as billionaire Spaniard learns the government plans to tax an additional 100 million euros. With no border, is moving a few km next door to Portugal worth a 100 million?
More meaningful though is business taxes/regulations, which are a large part of why Europe has lost so many Unicorns to the NYSE and why within America, Texas is kind of killing it in terms of business relocations.
I personally think it’s a race to the bottom but those are the constraints that exist.
And this is why the 1983 tax cut in the US increased revenue as at the reduced rates more wealthy people paid rather than avoided taxes.
Oh interesting, I wasn’t aware there were actually examples of the Laffer curve working in reality! I alwats thought it was just a theoretical that conservatives had latched onto…
It is the only incident of Laffer being proven correct as far as I know. It is the 2nd to last time spending was cut along side taxes.
Cool to know about, thanks!
Sadly we should cit spending along side tax cuts. Had we done that things would be better
Honestly, I’m just not sure deficit spending outside of wars/economic emergencies was a great strategy and instead, a time bomb Reaganomics left everyone else to deal with. I think that’s the ridiculously outsized part of spending that would’ve been the best to cut. If I remember correctly, servicing the debt is now on par with American military spending…
Yeah but honest well thought out economic conservative budgets are rare and unpopular.
Yeah, I’m not sure I’ve seen any of those in my lifetime. I’m Canadian and even Steven Harper, who would be almost a Democrat by American standards, wanted to go to war with the census for Reasons.
Broadly though, my understanding of Conservative values, peeling back the state, more self reliance etc is broadly unpopular to the many who think the state has a big role to play in social welfare from education to healthcare
If you could offer just rough ideas/goals, what would your sane, honest Conservative budget feature? Not looking to fight just genuinely curious. (No numbers obviously but like what would you want to cut. No vague “government waste” though please.)