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A sales tax doesn't have to be regressive. If you tax luxury items while not taxing essentials you'd probably get an even more progressive system than we have now.

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That's true, but making a sales tax progressive creates the same complication that exists in the current system, only with even more incentive for corporations to lobby for special exemptions, reclassifications, credits, etc., for the products that they produce.

It wouldn't be that difficult. Lots of states that have sales tax don't tax food. Simply make the essentials untaxed or any product of a particular category under a particular price untaxed. We have these measures in the current system. If you earn under $6,000 you pay no tax.

The benefit is that you take the burden off the individual and leave it all to computers. There's a "Taxable" flag and the equation is simple. IF (item.category == Food or price < (select minprice from categorylimits where categorylimits.category = item.category)) then tax = 0 else tax = 0.25 * item.price

Done. What a beautiful world that would be.

Exactly; all the companies who make goods that might conceivably qualify for an exemption start spending a lot of their focus on getting that (since it's a big discount if they do) instead of focusing on providing the best product/best price/whatever.

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