However, if we're talking about a flat tax, my own preference would be to tax the means of production: They don't move around too much, they're hard to hide on the Cayman Islands, and no amount of cooking the books can obfuscate them.
Plus, it gives a simple and effective means to stop tax cheats: If nobody pays property tax on a factory, that must mean that nobody wants to claim ownership, and the factory thus belongs to the government. That way, the state gets its taxes and the fatcats get to figure out among themselves who'll be paying them.
The value of each asset should be priced as the higher of the market value and the government auditors' assessment in order to dampen asset price bubbles.
I don't really care about Wall Street or their funny-money or their fancy paper. When the last chip hits the table, he who controls the productive assets wins.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Property taxes, here in the States, are levied by local and state authorities, for the most part. A Federal property tax on land, farms, factories, & etc held by US corporations outside the US is a really interesting idea. If dedicated to the same purposes as the local property taxes: education and infrastructure, it could get broad support.
At least I see a way of presenting a good case to the Public.
Of course, the result was the CIA acting as an enforcer for United Fruit in overthrowing the government. But in abstract, its a check on understating taxable property value that bears considering. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
The threat of nationalisation at compensation equivalent to the value declared for tax purposes is scary if and only if a) you systematically under-value your land in order to defraud the taxpayers AND b) there is a real need for land reform.
I am not sure that there is a real need for land reform in much of The West(TM). So we'd need an auditor corps to assess the property values.
