Why would you want to tax leisure? Wouldn't this promote less intense (i.e. more leisurely) and thus, less productive work?
Gustavo ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robin Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 11:36 AM Subject: Tax Leisure via Time Audits? > Once upon a time income taxes were difficult to collect, because > income was hard to cheaply monitor. So governments used less > efficient taxes, and arguably this was a reason the size of > government was lower. Today it seems that we can cheaply monitor > the act of paying wages, and so income taxes are feasible, and > government is larger. > > Income taxes are inefficient, however, because people respond by > substituting leisure and home production for wages. But this > inefficiency need only apply if we assume that we cannot cheaply > monitor time spent working for wages. And as the technology of > surveillance improves, it should get easier to monitor this. > > Perhaps in the future, the government will randomly check on each > person ten times a year, and see if they are working for wages > at that moment. Taxes would then depend the fraction of times > that, when checked over the last few years, they were found to be > working for wages. Of course to implement this each person will > need a cell phone, beeper, or some way to be contacted at random > times when they are working for wages. But since most people will > have such things for other reasons, the presumption will be that > the exceptions are doing it to avoid taxes, and so failure to > contact will be coded as not working for wages. > > Anyone ever estimated the size of the deadweight loss from the > income tax distortion? > > > > > Robin Hanson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://hanson.gmu.edu > Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University > MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444 > 703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
