Issue Position: Seven Principles of Effective Taxation

Issue Position

Taxes are essential to a free society. We all know that we can tax too much or too little but what differentiates a good tax from a bad tax? A good tax can build up a state, and a bad tax can destroy it. I would submit the following 7 principles.

1. A good tax respects privacy, property and freedom. Possession of property is natural and essential to a free society. When government takes by taxation the fruit of ones labor (property, which can be money merchandise or land), it destroys a fundamental human right to possess or dispossess their own property.

2. A good tax does not punish what it creates. For a legislator to create a tax that tempts one to evasion and avoidance and then punishes such is wrong.

3. A good tax is simple. Complicated tax systems require high government cost to collect and administer and high costs to the taxpayer to conform.

4. A good tax is by consent. Taxes must only be levied with the consent of the people being taxed.

5. A good tax encourages thrift and industry. A tax that punishes the hardest
working and most productive among us through excessive and progressive taxation is self-defeating; it bites the very hands that are feeding it.

6. A good tax discourages the excesses of the state. Excessive taxes and massive government are bedfellows. An abstemious tax will discourage excessive government largeness and defeat grand socialism by limiting revenue.

7. A good tax does not divide. Taxes that pit one class against another (those who pay taxes vs. those who live on taxes or smokers vs. non-smokers etc.) will create class warfare and disunite the two. A good tax should reach every member of society (excepting the very poor). All should know that government is not free.

Suggested Reading:

1. For good and Evil- Taxation in the Course of Civilization. - Charles Adams
2. Property and Freedom - Richard Pipes
3. Federal Taxation in America - W. Elliot Brownle
4. Flat Tax Revolution -- Steve Forbes

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