> why are individuals taxed rather than businesses?
The big question to me is, why do we tax production rather than consumption? We shouldn't have income taxes at all. We should have sales taxes. Make basic necessities like food exempt.
The big question to me is, why do we tax production rather than consumption? We shouldn't have income taxes at all. We should have sales taxes. Make basic necessities like food exempt.
It's true, though, that on average, rich people consume less of their income than poor people, because they save or invest a portion of it instead, simply because they can. That's a good thing. Our current tax system discourages people from saving and investing, and encourages them to consume. Then something bad happens and we wonder why there's nothing saved to tide us over.
Exempting basic necessities from sales tax is how you prevent it from putting too much of a burden on poor people; most of what they consume is going to be basic necessities (or at least it should be, if they're rational), so it wouldn't be taxed.
Commodity pricing may contribute to inflation over time. But commodity prices go down, whereas currency tends to move in one direction until the civilization backing it collapses, or the specie changes.
The people who maintain the infrastructure which enables you to have that money.
No, it would incentivize investing, since if you just leave money sitting under a mattress, it loses buying power over time because of inflation.
> the economy works better when people spend money
The economy works better when people create wealth through cooperation, specialization, and trade. Taxing production reduces the incentive for people to do that.
It requires people to not consume; any money that is put towards investment is not put towards consumption.
Sure. But they aren't consumption. The whole point of investing is to forgo consumption now in order to put those resources to use for something else, something that will improve the situation in the future. That's where the returns on the investment come from.
And it might be good to try and limit accumulation even if the accumulation doesn't have real economic effects; it can still create resentment or bestow power.
Um, what? It requires huge government agencies, a ton of impenetrable regulations, and a lot of bother for people who have to file.
Whereas we already have a much simpler system for assessing sales tax whenever people make purchases.