--- Robin Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Once upon a time income taxes were difficult to collect, because > income was hard to cheaply monitor. So governments used less > efficient taxes,
Not necessarily. Real-estate taxes were not that difficult to collect, and rather efficient. Land has hitorically been used as a tax base. > Income taxes are inefficient, however, because people respond by > substituting leisure and home production for wages. Income taxes are also inefficient because they are complex, requiring tax lawyers and accountants, and million of hours of "home production" keeping records and filling out forms. > But this > inefficiency need only apply if we assume that we cannot cheaply > monitor time spent working for wages. What about taxes on profits? That will always be complex because of the question of what is a deductible expense. > And as the technology of > surveillance improves, it should get easier to monitor this. The technology would need to keep ahead of tax-evading encrypted texts. > Perhaps in the future, the government will randomly check on each > person ten times a year, and see if they are working for wages > at that moment. And if you are working at home? They will need a video camera. > Anyone ever estimated the size of the deadweight loss from the > income tax distortion? The book The Losses of Nations, estimates the US loss conservatively at over $1 trillion per year from all taxes. Fred Foldvary ===== [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more http://games.yahoo.com/
