Wednesday, October 6, 2010

How Much Tax Will Americans Pay

The problem that I see with our rapidly growing Government is that people have ways of avoiding taxes. For example wives of high earners might work at home providing goods and services for in family consumption  rather than in taxed worked, people might deal more in cash, or provide more of their own services, use barter etc.

For example a family with a low earner and high earner might keep the low earner working to help pay for the insurance, but if Gov. provides the insurance the low earner might quit a taxed job to provide services at home.

So the question  is how much tax will Americans pay before tax avoidance starts to reduces the Government income.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Ahhh... you've had this on your mind lately - at least I think I saw comments on other blogs where you said similar things.

I think it's a very interesting point. To my mind the question very quickly becomes: why do we tax desirable behavior at all? Production, labor, investment are all things we want people to engage in, so why discourage them by making them more costly?

Instead, why not only tax consumption? Particularly 'excessive' consumption - if such a concept can be defined.

JWO said...

Instead, why not only tax consumption? Particularly 'excessive' consumption - if such a concept can be defined.

I could not agree more.