Untaxing Privacy
One aspect lost about taxation is what form of taxation preserves personal privacy, a protection of personal property ownership.
So much of the media focuses on the tax returns of presidential candidates. To me, this is just a vulgar violation of privacy but the demand has forced revelations. By consent, the tax returns are posted on the internet (https://www.taxnotes.com/presidential-tax-returns). The mere fact politicians do this causes me to question how much respect they have for privacy and the privacy of individual Americans when they have so little respect for their own privacy. Dare I say FISA?
As my faithful readers know, I challenged Nebraska, Douglas County Assessor Walt Peffer on the topic ( https://andrewlsullivan.substack.com/p/assessor-abandons-privacy-control and https://andrewlsullivan.substack.com/p/open-appeal-to-walt-peffer and https://andrewlsullivan.substack.com/p/defending-mayor-stothert). Nice and thoughtful guy but we have our disagreements. Property tax sites need to protect the privacy of taxpayers.
The opponents of the EPIC Consumption tax claim it is regressive, but with the elimination of the State income tax, the working poor receive great benefits and will also see benefits in lower or stable rental fees. Yet the greatest benefit may be privacy.
I thought government officials would start seeing the benefits of a consumption tax and privacy. I wrote about how Omaha Mayor Stothert and her property taxes (https://andrewlsullivan.substack.com/p/defending-mayor-stothert) yet she lives under gated housing. What about the rest of the homeowners?
Consumption tax solves this. No income tax. No property tax. No invasive request for information and no direct exposure to the public. Privacy is restored, but no one but me is talking about this. Could it be, the real reason for opposing consumption tax is such a tax would prevent the manipulation of thousands of
people with the tax systems? Privacy and liberty intersect. Get others to think about this.