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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 27 Dec 2023 \ parent \ on: The Evil of the Residential Property Tax libertarian
Knee-jerk answer: Could be. Don't give a shit.
More reasonable answer: According to mainstream macroeconomic theory, the only non-distortionary tax is actually a uniform head tax. So, if that's what you really care about, replace all taxes with a fixed lump-sum tax that everyone pays.
Its more of a thorny problem to solve then it first appears.
Imagine you live in a hypothetical town that had no property taxes, and instead simply divided the annual budget equally among citizens. So a $50M budget and 5000 citizens results in a $10K yearly tax per person.
However this opens up more questions then it solves....if you own .15 acres of land and I own 100,000 acres of land are we equally using the same ratio of town services?
Perhaps the "right answer" would be to have a much more narrow definition of "town services" and have everything else pay-per-use (ie. pay for police protection, pay for fire protection, etc)
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My point isn't that a head tax is the "right" form of taxation. It's that it is considered the least distortionary.
I think it's clear that it's a particularly bad form of taxation, actually, and it should make the other person acknowledge that distortion isn't really what they care most about.
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