

 The Other Taxes: Who Pays Them? - fun2have
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/the-other-taxes-who-pays-them/

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iwr
Other factors have to be considered as well. The wealthy or super-wealthy
(individuals or companies) are usually more mobile. A middle-class, working
individual, with a mortgage, is pinned down to a greater degree. It also
depends on the mobility of capital goods. If you have big, hard-to-move
infrastructure, you are pinned down. "Patriotic" millionaires notwithstanding,
turning the screw on the rich and mobile may just mean more capital flight.
Screwing the heavy industries would just discourage investment in that sector
(i.e. Detroit).

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lionhearted
Oh. I thought this article was going to be about the price of food,
transportation, and many goods industries are driven up because of regulation.
EX, why shipping by train is so disastrously expensive that it cancels out the
efficiencies, due to regulation. Or why you can't get a decent meal for less
than $5, where natural equilibrium prices should settle in at $1, and how this
_really_ hurts the poor.

Instead, it's just about how taxes aren't progressive enough to suit this guy.
What a shame.

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lotharbot
Right. He's basically complaining that certain individual taxes (like sales
tax) serve to mitigate the progressive nature of income tax, making the net
result still progressive but not as steep as he wants. That is a fair position
to argue, but not really a new contribution to the discussion (this makes it
off-topic for HN.)

An analysis of corporate taxes and regulations, and how they are passed on to
consumers, would be a genuinely _new_ contribution. This would be especially
interesting if feedback effects were included -- paying sales tax on something
with an inflated price due to other taxes, for example. We have a government
that specializes in taxes (and fees and regulatory costs) that are hidden from
the consumer; it would be a great contribution to show which subset of
consumers actually ends up paying those.

