Sunday, December 13, 2009
“Stupid and complex” is how author and attorney William Cox characterizes the current system of taxation in the United States. Over time, the burden of taxes has increasingly fallen upon the middle-class, and that needs to change, Cox argues. There is no shortage of proposals to overhaul the tax system. A flat tax has been promoted since the 1980s, while others want to do away entirely with income taxes and replace them with a national sales tax.
But Cox believes the most fair alternative would be to levy a tax on “the movement of all money in our economy.” This would amount to more than a sales tax. “Not just every time you buy a pack of chewing gum, but every time stocks and bonds are bought and sold, every time currencies are traded, and every time Halliburton invests in a new oil rig.”
He claims that because ordinary Americans have “far fewer and much smaller financial transactions, the wealthy and the multinational corporations, who always have to spend a lot of money to avoid having any ‘taxable income,’ would have to share proportionally in paying the toll for their traffic on our economic highway and their use of our courts and institutions to enforce their contracts and to facilitate their profits. Why should so many of our largest corporations completely escape the payment of any taxes?”
_Noel Brinkerhoff
A Smart and Simple Tax (by William Cox, Information Clearing House)
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