A major argument for income tax is that it's naturally countercyclical, which means that governments tax more when incomes are high and less when they are low. The 'progressive' — concave upwards — income tax is even more so. Per Keynesian theory, countercyclical fiscal policy acts to stabilize the economy, and the US has been more stable since the tax base shifted from property tax and tariffs towards income taxes. Tariffs, in particular, can be disastrously procyclical — a failure of a domestic manufacturer may lead to a decline in economic performance and an uptick in imports, which is then exacerbating. It might be possible for a land tax or property tax to be countercyclical, but this would likely depend on the centralized adjustment of valuations, since there is not so far any automatic technique for valuing real property other than immediately after a sale. History has taught us to be cautious about centralized economic micromanagement.
The temporal effects of income tax are often lost in colloquial debates among non-economists who have the impression that they exist primarily for moral reasons — however, the wealthy, in practice, are very good at avoiding them.
> It might be possible for a land tax or property tax to be countercyclical, but this would likely depend on the centralized adjustment of valuations, since there is not so far any automatic technique for valuing real property other than immediately after a sale.
Yeah, this is a problem that would need to be solved.
The temporal effects of income tax are often lost in colloquial debates among non-economists who have the impression that they exist primarily for moral reasons — however, the wealthy, in practice, are very good at avoiding them.