There you go again. This is not a Republican "argument"; it's a basic concept recognized by all students of taxation.
>> But the claim that in the long run everything
>evens out, doesn't wash.
NOBODY said "everything evens out," or anything close to it. Try to rebut what is said, if you can.
>Because the wealthy can defer spending, they can also defer paying taxes of
many thousands of dollars a year, and they don't just stick this money in
their mattresses. By the time Mr. Moneybags gets round to spending his
ill-gotten gains, the investment income from the deferred taxes alone will
be well in excess of any sales tax he has to pay (even after capital gains
tax), so the effective tax rate on the wealthy never catches up with that on
the poor.>
The investment income might or might not exceed the initial tax liability, depending on rates of return and the time involved, but this income itself is taxed if it is spent, so under a consumption tax there is no payoff to deferring taxable spending. You'd be on firmer ground if you noted that income never spent, e.g., given away as gifts or bequests, does escape consumption taxation.
>Max continues:
>
>>Of course, income taxes "can be" progressive,
>>but so can consumption taxes, as you said.
>>The reality that must be faced, however,
>>is that neither tend to be.
>
>This is plain disingenuous. Over the past few decades the tax burden has
been shifted from the wealthy to middle- and low-income tax payers by making
income-taxes less progressive and relying more on sales taxes and other
forms of regressive taxation.>>
This is tautology. Actually, the major change has been a shift from corporate to payroll tax at the Federal level. The rest is second order effects, in terms of magnitude. In any case, it does not debunk the point, which I thought was the lack of real-world differentiation between income and consumption taxes in the states. The ax I'm grinding with this point is that progressivity, especially for state taxes, is over-rated as a political issue.
>> Despite that, it still remains true that income taxes are substantially
more progressive (or at least less regressive) than sales taxes. And its
much easier to institute a progressive income tax than a progressive sales
tax. . . .>>
"Easier" how? Politically? Nobody's getting much political mileage these days advocating the institution of a progressive income tax. Under different circumstances, it would be no less easy to do so, or to propose a progressive consumption tax.
>Max:
>
>>On the whole, too much is made of tax incidence,
>>especially at the state level, where income taxation
>>is woefully inadequate to finance the public sector,
>>and not enough of expenditure benefits. This
>>defensiveness (a reluctance to defend public
>>spending) does more harm than is offset by the
>>advocacy of redistributive taxation.
>
>Is this what they are saying at the EPI these days--it doesn't matter who
pays the taxes, just so long as they get paid?>>
This is your second severe attack of reading incomprehension. I grow weary of restatement.
All remarks are my responsibility and not necessarily agreed to by anybody else at EPI. We're not a trotskyist groupuscule.
<<With friends like these, no wonder liberalism has got itself a bad name.>
I'm not trying to be your friend. I've got other things to do.
MBS