• curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 days ago

    Sales tax, yes, corporate tax… No.

    Sales tax is functionally a tax on the lower income anyway, since it has a more substantial impact on a lower income vs a higher income. Its regressive.

    Unless we are specifically talking some sort of luxuries tax based on a value that changes with an index (like a luxury housing tax, median values against area median income + percentage overhead before additional tax, etc, or speculation/vacancy taxes, taxes on private jets or yachts, so on).

    Corporate tax is a tax on profit though (talking in generalities here obviously, there are many types of taxes), which doesn’t apply the same way here in terms of a direct consumer cost, so I’m not sure what you are driving at in that aspect.

    • iii@mander.xyz
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      17 days ago

      Corporate tax is a tax on profit though (talking in generalities here obviously,

      Thank for that remark, important distinction indeed.

      • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 days ago

        It is, and unfortunately its also what’s most often abused.

        Corporate tax (and what’s more equivalent, individual income tax) should see the same progressive taxation, where higher profits yield higher tax rates above each of those thresholds.

        Unfortunately, corporations play a lot of games with accounting to effectively reduce those profits and not pay their share (or not at all, even with some extremely large corporations), effectively shifting the tax burden onto individuals instead. Then, of course, those individuals benefitting most from the corporations not paying their fair share are also playing accounting games to reduce their own tax burden, further shifting the burden onto lower income individuals.

        So when you combine that with increased costs for everyday consumer goods, you see an increasingly higher burden on lower and middle income, even higher income individuals until you get to the extremely wealthy outliers. The impact is greater the lower you go in income level though.