Many EU countries have a “VAT” and like feel like this is kinda targeting poor people. Like, for the rich, this is insignificant, for poorer people, a (example) 20% tax would be a huge burden. Why do they do this?
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It is, but it’s also a very efficient and difficult to evade tax. For many EU countries the VAT revenue is equal or larger than the income tax revenue.
Most Europeans don’t mind it. You can control your spending, so VAT doesn’t hit us in inconvenient ways, like for example, taxes on cars and property.
European countries compensate poor people with good social programs. So in the end, poor people are getting more benefits than the VAT they pay.
Just to make sure you know: Basically everyone has a VAT, except the US. It’s not some special EU thing.
We have it in Switzerland, Canada has it, Japan has it, China has it, India has it, Russia has it, Brazil has it, Indonesia has it, Australia has it, Ukraine has it, Mexico has it, South Africa has it… I’m stopping here, but every country I googled had it so far.
VAT is a sales tax, not an income tax.
Because fuck the poor and working class. Don’t forget that they’re double dipping since income is often taken out of your earnings before you even get your money then every single purchase is taxed too.
In what way does VAT hurt the poor more than the rich? Considering it’s on each item you buy it clearly impacts the rich more than the poor.
That tax is reduced for important goods in most countries, like with bread
Children’s clothing too.
Someone wanna tell me one of those countries with reduced VAT for children’s clothing or bread?
We get reduced VAT on hotel stays and medicine only. Bread, children’s clothing (or more importantly if you need to use it, milk formula, which is going to cost you more) are all full VAT. Estonian here.
The Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Poland. I knew some, others I just Kagi’d
Ah fair enough, not sure the reduced VAT for bread of children’s clothing is going to matter much compared to the insane 1000+ euro kindergarten fees per kid monthly (in the Netherlands). Some of the rest might be nice places to live though.
I don’t know where in the Netherlands you are, but kindergarten is free. I happen to live in the Netherlands. You’re going to get costs such as pens and paper for your kid. But there’s no fees.
I’m not, but I looked into the CoL as it’s the highest paying country in the EU for software engineers. Maybe it was just the it private ones that are paid and I was looking at those implicitly because I was looking at international ones where it wouldn’t be expected for kids to speak Dutch at home already
Youre always allowed to pay. But they’re not allowed to require it
They also tax the rich through progressive income taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes etc.
If you’re asking why not just tax the rich in place of a VAT, well, it’s sort of why not tax the rich to pay for absolutely everything we could want. The costs and difficulties in taxing the rich generally scale to the point where the marginal revenue raised by the tax becomes negative.
If you’re asking why not just tax the rich in place of a VAT, well, it’s sort of why not tax the rich to pay for absolutely everything we could want.
So basically, you can only tax so much before the rich get mad and leave the EU? 🤔