Look at it this way:
A person is earning $500 a week and spends all of it, he pays say 15% income tax ($75) and of that $425 left he pays 15% sales tax ($63.75) meaning that the government acquired $138.75 dollars, 27.25% of his income leaving him with $361.25 of value to show for it. If we were to remove the sales tax and apply that 15% and apply it as a percentage of the current tax rate against all tax brackets (say 15%, 22.5%, 28%, 33%) then the brackets would increase as follows (17.75%, 28.125%, 35%, 41.25%) it changes the ratio towards high earners, a person who was surrendering 27.25% of his income is now only faced with 17.75%, that is a pay increase of just under 10% or $88 less in tax per week all up that can be saved or spent, now rather than having $361 of value he has $412... Etc...
The people on the 2nd bracket come out relatively even, the people on the 3rd bracket bear some cost and the people on the 4th bracket pick up the remainder which is only a few percent (the total sales being lower than the total income helps). Of course without actual figures on the revenue from sales tax and the money earned from each bracket as a % of the net income of the country I can't work out exactly what the new tax brackets look like, so I was doing a really rough scale for the tax bracket increases, but it should make it a bit clearer how this works - And I've had a few beers too so someone might want to check my numbers .
Add to all of that the removed layer of bureaucracy and you'd have a more efficient system that takes less from the poorest.
And lower policing? Only in terms of there being less crimes to prosecute because less stupid things are illegal. Make weed legal and you'll have less crime and less police needed to arrest the pot growers, for example.
A person is earning $500 a week and spends all of it, he pays say 15% income tax ($75) and of that $425 left he pays 15% sales tax ($63.75) meaning that the government acquired $138.75 dollars, 27.25% of his income leaving him with $361.25 of value to show for it. If we were to remove the sales tax and apply that 15% and apply it as a percentage of the current tax rate against all tax brackets (say 15%, 22.5%, 28%, 33%) then the brackets would increase as follows (17.75%, 28.125%, 35%, 41.25%) it changes the ratio towards high earners, a person who was surrendering 27.25% of his income is now only faced with 17.75%, that is a pay increase of just under 10% or $88 less in tax per week all up that can be saved or spent, now rather than having $361 of value he has $412... Etc...
The people on the 2nd bracket come out relatively even, the people on the 3rd bracket bear some cost and the people on the 4th bracket pick up the remainder which is only a few percent (the total sales being lower than the total income helps). Of course without actual figures on the revenue from sales tax and the money earned from each bracket as a % of the net income of the country I can't work out exactly what the new tax brackets look like, so I was doing a really rough scale for the tax bracket increases, but it should make it a bit clearer how this works - And I've had a few beers too so someone might want to check my numbers .
Add to all of that the removed layer of bureaucracy and you'd have a more efficient system that takes less from the poorest.
And lower policing? Only in terms of there being less crimes to prosecute because less stupid things are illegal. Make weed legal and you'll have less crime and less police needed to arrest the pot growers, for example.
.