Taxes: Sources Define Destinations

The destination of tax revenue should directly and rigidly define the destination of where it is spent. The destination should be related to the source as if the source was a customer buying services from the destination. As such, taxes on the source, and only the source, must be raised to raise spending in the related destination, and lowering taxes on the source requires lowering spending on the related destination. Some example sources with possible destinations:

  • personal income taxes –> “welfare” type programs, employee protections, job creation activities, education
  • corporate income taxes –> business promotion activities, education
  • residential property taxes –> protective services for residential areas, transportation improvements for residential areas, residential zoning
  • corporate property taxes –> protective services for businesses, transportation improvements for commercial and industrial purposes, business zoning
  • VAT/sales taxes –> business promotion activities, consumer protection and awareness activities, research/legislation/anything having to do with products of sold product category
  • transportation fuel taxes –> transportation maintenance, transportation alternative fuel research and grants, transportation efficiency research and grants
  • death taxes –> “welfare” type programs, cemetery and mortuary support, medical services (small amount, in cases of medically related death), protective services (small amount, in cases of criminally related death)

These should give a basic idea of what related means. It is important to note that amounts given to each destination from a given source should be rigidly defined based on the relatedness between the two, so that protective services is only slightly related to death taxes but much more related to property taxes.