Word: taxã
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Instead of sheepishly ignoring such disruptions, those of us who value our freedom from the garish electronic tones of “Für Elise” should push for cell phone fines. Think of them as an “annoyance tax?? that reflects the cost of time lost while cell-phone users rifle through their bags to switch off offending phones. If your cell phone rings in class, you will pay $20. If it goes off in the dining hall...
...argument for cutting the dividend tax is that it amounts to a double tax??the money is taxed once as corporate profits and again as dividends when it is passed on to investors. But “double taxation” has been a part of America’s economic system for years, with money getting taxed first when it goes to workers as income (payroll tax) and then again when it is spent (sales...
There are two arguments for this kind of “sin tax??—a tax designed by the government not as the most efficient way to raise revenue but as a means to steer peoples’ behavior away from a practice of which it does not approve. The first argument is that such a tax protects people from their own bad choices. This argument, however, is far less persuasive than the point that such a tax accounts for the actual cost of smoking to society. Nevertheless, the economic effects of smoking are difficult...
...first argument used to justify a cigarette tax??that the government should protect people from their bad choices because of its compelling interest in the health of its citizenry—is unpersuasive. It is incredibly paternalistic and condescending toward the tens of millions of Americans who make the conscious decision to start smoking, knowing the harmful health effects associated with it. The logic of the argument is that smokers’ loss of liberty is less important than the government’s compelling interest in smoker’s health, and the underlying assumption is that...
...economics profession on smoking’s health externality is far from settled. Besides, even if governments could accurately calculate the cost of the externality, they would almost certainly decide to increase the magnitude of the tax hike to deter smoking through punishing smokers rather than relating the tax??s magnitude to the externality cost. New York City’s decision to raise taxes by almost $1.50 (along with a nearly commensurate increase in state taxes) was not based off economic analysis of smoking’s negative effect on the city’s coffers...