Soleron said:
That is the key thing, yes. I believe (and can't prove) that the differences in lifestyle would cancel out for nearly everyone, and the benefit of making tax simpler and harder to avoid would be far greater. So no allowing for changes would be needed. I don't believe it is the function of government to be encouraging and discouraging specific behaviour (fuel use, importing, varying VAT on items) with taxes. The market-set price should, under capitalism, be the actual price. |
Well, I'll leave the first paragraph, for now, as I haven't really put much thought into the idea.
The issue I have with the second paragraph is that the market price seldom reflects the actual costs. Petrol prices without fuel duty, for example, doesn't reflect pollution, noise costs, congestion, blah, blah, blah - I also believe that fuel duty doesn't reflect this particularly well, either, and so I propose another system where both fuel and road taxes are scrapped in favour of a more complex version of the congestion zone.
