I want my taxes to be raised

[crash]

I have a question: what would be the effect on the economy of really jacking up the taxes on gas, cigarettes, and booze?

I mean, I know some jobs would be lost in certain industries. I suppose trucking would be affected (and therefore many products), maybe we could help out the truckers with subsidies or whatever.

In my (economically uninformed?) opinion, jacking up the taxes on these three things would have many good effects.

gas: everyone agrees that dependence on oil is a problem. Jack up the gas tax, make the cars makers give us more efficient cars, make more people take public transportation. cut down on pollution.

alcohol: problems with booze cost the country tons of money. Jack up the tax, people don't have to pay if if they don't want to. Ditto for smokes.


This lets us cut taxes in other areas. People get to decide whether they want to pay the extra taxes. What's wrong with the plan?

[meow_meow]

The obvious problem with this terrible plan is that it unfairly punishes the impoverished corporations that supply these goods - the exxon-mobils, the altrias and the anheiser-buschs of the world, and by extension, their shareholders. It should be obvious that the major shareholders of these companies are mutual funds, whose shares are in turn owned by the widows and orphans of the world.

To sum up, your plan involves the government stealing bread from the mouths of America's orphans. Shame on you.

[crash]

Right. I know you were kidding, but I wonder how much, say, a 25 cent/six pack tax increase would lower beer consumption. I bet not all that much. I know I'd still drink about the same amount.


Yeah, I know a candidate wouldn't have much of a chance with this, what with all the companies throwing money to the opponent.

[ThaSaltCracka]

Why? Because it's my money and I want to spend it on whatever I want. I also do not want to pay more for goods simply because the government decides to tax them. Another question is, where does this tax money go? My guess is half of it is wasted by governemnt agencies trying to enforce taxes.

[pokerjo22]

Jacking up taxes on such goods too much typically leads to an increase in the black market for such goods - i.e. more money in the hands of criminals.

[crash]

[ QUOTE ]
Why? Because it's my money and I want to spend it on whatever I want.



I also do not want to pay more for goods simply because the government decides to tax them.



Another question is, where does this tax money go? My guess is half of it is wasted by governemnt agencies trying to enforce taxes.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wasn't really trying to debate the overall level of taxes. Let's say the government plans to raise X dollars in taxes next year. My question was: why not do it my way, rather than more taxes on income, cap gains or whatever?

Well, given that we have to get the revenue from somewhere (see the above assumption), you have to pick something to be taxed. Better gas booze and cigs than higher income tax, right?

You point out another plus to my plan. It's a lot easier to enforce sales taxes than income tax and cap gains etc. The tax is collected at the sale. yet another reason to prefer sales taxes over other taxes, IMO.

[crash]

maybe--but more so in less developed countries, I'd guess. I can't really see a big underground black market in, say, gasoline in the U.S.

[Easy E]

we continue raising sin taxes (which include gambling, you heretic). Consumption of sin items falls off due to the cost, eroding the tax base of funds needed to run the gov't... eventually leading us to high sin taxes AND renewed income taxes to make up for the deficit

[Cashcow]

Why choose these goods? Why not Bottled water, bread and milk, or hell, groceries in general.

[crash]

[ QUOTE ]
we continue raising sin taxes (which include gambling, you heretic). Consumption of sin items falls off due to the cost, eroding the tax base of funds needed to run the gov't... eventually leading us to high sin taxes AND renewed income taxes to make up for the deficit

[/ QUOTE ]

True, if we raise the taxes too high, the activity will drop off and we lose a revenue base. A couple points:

You'd have to raise the taxes pretty high to substantially cut down on drinking and smoking (this coming from a drinker and on/off smoker).

Alcohol causes a LOT of problems and costs the country a lot of money. If drinking goes down, we lose a revenue base but we can also save money in police forces, hospitals, etc.

Re the gas revenue base: the less gas this country uses, the better, as far as I can tell. Then we wouldn't have to spend billions on middle east oil countries.

So I agree that your scenarios are possible, I just wonder if they would actually be bad.

[ThaSaltCracka]

How about less taxes overall? Can we try that?

[PITTM]

many of the taxes you propose are regressive and would just be taxing the poor generally. bummmmmerrrr

rj

[crash]

b/c the items you mentioned don't cause problems, individually or nationally.

Most agree that our dependence on foreign oil is a problem. Most agree that pollution is a problem.

Alcohol causes all kinds of problems, health and $ and crime. Tax the things that cause problems.

[crash]

[ QUOTE ]
many of the taxes you propose are regressive and would just be taxing the poor generally. bummmmmerrrr

rj

[/ QUOTE ]

I took some a long time ago, I don't remember much... that's sorta why I was asking.

It seems we could get around your concerns somehow. w/the extra revenue we could give other tax credits to the poor.

anyway, gambling is a tax on the stupid (probably hurts the poor more than the rich, too) and I'm for gambling /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
It seems we could get around your concerns somehow. w/the extra revenue we could give other tax credits to the poor.


[/ QUOTE ] so basically with the extra revenue we can give most of it back as tax credits? /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[Cashcow]

No, I can't live without smokes and booze man. Are you freaking crazy.

[crash]

Dunno about "most" of it. The very low income households don't pay much in income tax anyway. I suppose I could also take the stance "hey, at least the booze/cig tax is a voluntary one, if people (poor or not) don't want to be affected by it, then stop smoking".

Also note: raise the tax on a six pack by (say) 25 cents. Say a poor family buys 4 sixers a week. Buck a week, $50 per year more. I don't think this is gonna sink a poor family anyway. Yeah I know it adds up, but see my other posts for how reduced drinking/smoking/gas saves the country $ in other ways.

[jcx]

Look around your residence. Nearly everything you can put your hands on was delivered to the place your bought it by truck. Trucking companies are not going to smile and accept higher prices for gas or diesel - They will pass the prices on to retailers, who will pass it on to the consumer.

[PITTM]

why are people so obsessed with lowering taxes or giving tax credits to people? we have taxes in place for a reason, because they benefit the common good. we have basically gotten rid of the common good fund so either a) people in the middle class get an extra 200 dollars or whatever it was or b) people in the upper class get an extra 5000 dollars to add to their many millions of dollars. this just doesnt make any sense. many lower income or middle class families got a one time check for 200 dollars but may have lost their healthcare programs as a result. fair trade? not even close. this is why tax reductions ALWAYS benefit the wealthy, because the middle class reductions also result in loss of social welfare problems for that same class.

rj

[crash]

[ QUOTE ]
why are people so obsessed with lowering taxes or giving tax credits to people? we have taxes in place for a reason, because they benefit the common good. we have basically gotten rid of the common good fund so either a) people in the middle class get an extra 200 dollars or whatever it was or b) people in the upper class get an extra 5000 dollars to add to their many millions of dollars. this just doesnt make any sense. many lower income or middle class families got a one time check for 200 dollars but may have lost their healthcare programs as a result. fair trade? not even close. this is why tax reductions ALWAYS benefit the wealthy, because the middle class reductions also result in loss of social welfare problems for that same class.

rj

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't think you were rude at all.

I tend to agree with you--I don't mind paying taxes.

[Gomez22]

[ QUOTE ]
gas: everyone agrees that dependence on oil is a problem. Jack up the gas tax, make the cars makers give us more efficient cars, make more people take public transportation. cut down on pollution.

[/ QUOTE ]

What you fail to realize with this statement are a few major things...

1. An increase in taxes on gasoline (at the federal level) will only raise the costs of ALL goods manufactured, transported, imported and exported in and out of the US.

2. This raise in costs will affect us much more on a consumer level than a 1-2% tax hike on gasoline itself due to the fact that producers will have increased costs with manufacturing and transporting goods, "middlemen" will have higher costs to pay (due to both an increase in the cost of manufacturing AND the increase in wholesale costs), which, in turn will raise consumer costs (ie: you and me) to an unacceptable high.

Booze and cigs are considered "luxury" items in the sense that they are not required to survive(at least for MOST of us).

In today's world, on the other hand, and for almost all of the working force in rural areas, gasoline in almost a must have for transportation to and from jobs, and necessary for the caregiving of children.

Just my 2 cents, but a tax on gasoline would affect us more than you might care to find out about.

'Mez

[meow_meow]

You are so right.
I live in the semi-autonomous region to the North of you, and we have much higher gasoline taxes here.
The price of absolutely every consumer item is affected by this gap.
Lets pluck a number out of thin air, and say 20% of the retail price of an item is due to transport costs (probably a high-side estimate). Now lets say 50% of transport costs are fuel-related. Now, assume that an increase in the gas-tax will add 15% to fuel costs.
So, in this worst-case estimate, retail prices are a whopping 1.5% higher than without the gas tax.

Considering federal and provincial sales tax on most retail items total 15%, it's not impacting me a whole lot.

[crash]

Yeah, this seems to be the major problem with the gas tax. A couple points:

1. We all agree that we need to lessen our dependence on foreign oil--maybe higher prices are worth it? Sure a higher gas tax has a downside but you gotta balance it with the upside. (less taxes in other areas, too)
2. Maybe there's some way to give some credits to the truckers so the industry won't be as affected as regular consumers.
3. We'd have to look at other countries with higher gas taxes to see how this played out (of course, we're a lot bigger than, say, UK or France, and we rely on trucking a lot more.

[Shoe]

In France, they just came out with cars that run on compressed air, and go up to 70 mph. No emissions. Everyone in America should be driving one of these. No more oil problems. Sure, performance might be a little less that what we are used to, but doesn't the gain far out-weigh the cost here?

I also think we should have a national sales tax / luxury tax replace the income tax. It could be designed to bring in the same amount of income, and we could save money by no longer needing an IRS.

[Easy E]

would be BAD.

I was just commenting on the inevitable decline in tax revenues- besides, politicians can't help themselves when raising sin tax rates.

[jakethebake]

So government-sponsored theft is o.k. as long as it's not from widows and orphans. Brilliant!

[ QUOTE ]
The obvious problem with this terrible plan is that it unfairly punishes the impoverished corporations that supply these goods - the exxon-mobils, the altrias and the anheiser-buschs of the world, and by extension, their shareholders. It should be obvious that the major shareholders of these companies are mutual funds, whose shares are in turn owned by the widows and orphans of the world.

To sum up, your plan involves the government stealing bread from the mouths of America's orphans. Shame on you.

[/ QUOTE ]

[jakethebake]

You do realize that the margins on gasoline are already very small and that most of what you pay at the pump is already tax? And you do realize that most non-poker players lump gambling in with other "sins" like alcohol and smoking. So they'd all want to tack on another 25% to the rake making poker unprofitable and not at all fun for any of us.