Collective Conscious

In full, from Ygle­sias:

“Who Pays?” (PDF) from the Insti­tute on Tax­a­tion and Eco­nomic Pol­icy offers an inter­est­ing look at regres­sive state/​local taxation:

Sev­eral points:

— Ques­tions about whether things should be done at the state or fed­eral level aren’t just about abstract con­sti­tu­tional views; state rev­enue sources are regressive.

— There is no rea­son that con­sump­tion tax rev­enue needs to be raised as a regres­sive retail sales tax. You can instead do a income tax with a pro­gres­sive rate struc­ture in which tax­able income is defined as “income minus savings.”

— Prop­erty taxes are regres­sive, but much less regres­sive than sales taxes. Con­se­quently, mea­sures to cap prop­erty taxes are a kind of fake assis­tance to the mid­dle class that actu­ally helps the top 20 percent.

— Con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als like to com­plain about the fed­eral deduc­tion for state and local taxes, but con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians will never elim­i­nate it since this is a form of tax break for rich people.

That’s all I’ve got.