RE: taxes

[Bruce McFarling <brmcf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 1 Apr 1995, Alan G. Isaac wrote:

> This appears to be a fallacy of composition. The question
> is whether a consumption tax will successfully tax
> _individual_ stocks of wealth. (And in response to Bill,
> the reason to do it this way is that I believe people
> will be much better at hiding their wealth than in
> hiding their consumption.) --Alan G. Isaac
>
	Why would that be the question?  If the question were permitted to
be how to get a progressive tax system, I don't see what taxing stocks of
wealth has to do with it.
	If the question were permitted to be how to tax stocks of wealth,
then why not do as proposed by Carroll and ??? in _How Rich is Too Rich?_
and use progressive gift taxation on the recipient (*not* on the estate,
which closes a handful of pre-death trasnfer dodges) so that anyone can
receive (in the specific proposal) 1 Million tax free, a second million
under a 25% tax rate, a third million at a 50% tax rate, a fourth million
at a 75% tax rate, and anything above that at 100% tax rate.  Unless they
take it with them, any inheritances from multi-millionares will be split
up, and the most that any inheritor could receive would be 2.5 million
dollars, which would result in 1.5 million in revenue.  And, obviously,
if a large fortune does get parcelled up in $1miilion increments, more
will get consumed, which will boost national incomes and as a side affect
income tax receipts.

Virtually,

Bruce McFarling, Knoxville
brmcf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx