What taxes in the United States do you consider regressive?

I think you missed the point entirely. No one said that “taxes” are the end all and be all of anything. It is the “terrain” on which the ruling class is launching a current assault on the workers and we need to meet them there because that is where they are assembled and it is one of the main things they are shooting us with. One of the reasons they are winning is that much of the "left" is sitting around in the mud rather than shooting back.

This is yet another of the "arguments" that don't have anything to do with anything. Workers don't write (or implement?) the tax laws so therefore ......................... what? Taxes are irrelevant to workers?

I just don't think tax is the sphere of class struggle and you have yet to show that it is. I will admit that post was pretty shitty and pedantic, but i refuse to believe taxation is where we should be concentrating our thinking and organizing energies. A critique of how some taxes hurt the WC more yes (such as the increase of VAT here in britain at the beginning of the year), but only along the way to a critique of taxation and the state. Not to sit here nit picking our more or less favourite taxes.

All of them as every tax benefits the large capitalist. If free market idiots got what they wanted and capitalists weren't taxed the entire market system would implode. If tax money goes to schools it's because it benefits the capitalist (as Adam Smith admitted in Wealth Of Nations). If tax dollars go to welfare it's because it will keep the capitalist 'reserve army of labor' pacified which again benefits the capitalist. Taxes go to roads so capitalist trade and commerce can take place, without publicly funded roads capitalism could not exist. When taxes go to war they're keeping the market economy in expansion mode witch is necessary f or it to exist (new markets/new resources). If taxes go to medicare/medicaid (public healthccare which Obama has destroyed) it's because capitalists need to justify their system and can't just throw workers away when they're used up (although thats just what capitalist did with the backing of Obama).

I'm with free market capitalists on this one....abolish taxes (only because they're the lifeblood of capitalism). I sure am glad my mother and father get social security checks though

Alexander what taxes are you referring to specifically though? For someone who is quick to point out their own focus on reality, your posts seem quite lacking in concrete analysis.

In New Zealand the government has put its Goods and Services Tax (GST) up to 15% about a year ago when it used to be 12.5%. I think we are one of the few countries in the world to have a blanket tax on all commodities and it is clearly a very anti-working class tax (it was introduced by the hard neo-liberal Labour government in the 80s). I would be very much in support of a movement against GST just like I would have supported the movement against the Poll Tax.

Free market taxism! I think some of the old socialists such as Scott Nearing actually found a way to legally refuse paying taxes for things they didn't agree with (war). "Tax resistance".

He wrote some good stuff for those of us looking to learn from the trial and errors of the early socialist movement in America (as far as trying to push socialism via reform and via the state apparatus).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Nearing

I did post this:

As to your other question:

I am not at all familiar with any taxes in New Zealand. Your description sounds like a sales tax, however, which is regressive, and should, if my supposition is correct, be opposed.

Right then I'll eat my words.

Yes it is a sales tax. The Labour party is now calling for GST off fruit and vegetables (ironically they introduced a flat rate GST in the 80s as I mentioned) which is a policy they picked up off a petition started by some Trots. The Workers Party, who are a Trot/Maoist fusion group, call for GST to be scrapped. Amongst my own comrades in AWSM it is not something we have really discussed a whole lot although maybe we should so I can't say what the attitude of libertarians here is to that particular tax. Like I said though personally I would see a movement against GST as being fairly positive and something to support. Sorry Yoda that is not the united states but maybe it answers your question a little.

I have to ask though why all these questions? Perhaps you could do your own research and begin to develop conclusions for yourself, which you could post for discussion, rather than always asking other people what they think about X, Y or Z?

The SPGB has answered the question of workers paying taxes this way.

"Actually, we don't deny that workers pay, in the sense of themselves handing over the money, some taxes. Our argument is that the burden of taxation does not fall in the end on the working class but on the propertied class and profits.

This is based on the assumption that in the medium term workers sell their ability to work at its cost of production (or what Marx called its value), i.e. at the cost of what they must buy to keep their skills up to scratch and also to raise a family to take their place on the labour market when they retire. It follows from this that any permanent increase in the workers' cost of living, whether from taxes or from higher prices will be passed on to employers as higher money wages and salaries (On the other hand, any permanent decrease in their cost of living, as from rent control or from subsidies to food or transport, will end up being a subsidy to employers in the form of lower than otherwise money wages.)

Having said this, most taxes in Britain are not even paid by workers but are collected and paid by businesses. Obviously, this is the case with corporation tax. It is also the case with income tax on wages and salaries, which is deducted by employers from nominal wages under the PAYE system and never even get into the hands of bank accounts of employees (income tax, in fact, is mainly a means of ensuring that workers without families don't get that part of wages meant for raising a family)

Perhaps less obviously, this also applies to VAT. It too falls on and is collected by businesses. As its name implies it is a tax on "value added" which, in capitalist economics, translates into a business's wages bill plus its profits. As we have just seen, wages in the medium term represent the cost of production of labour power, so though the amount of VAT payable is calculated on the amount of "value added" in fact just like corporation tax it only comes out of profits. Firms can't automatically increase their prices by the amount of the tax; they reduce their profits by it.

Excise duties on beer, spirits and tobacco are also paid out of their profits by the firms involved. Only in this case prices are raised. The government in effect creates an artificial monopoly position allowing monopoly prices to be charged - and then taxes away the monopoly profits for its own benefit. Insofar as these goods, selling at their monopoly prices, enter into the general cost of living of the working class they are reflected in higher wage levels.

The taxes workers actually pay out of their own pockets are such things as car licences, TV licences and, if they are owner occupiers, council tax - but, once again, in so far as these enter into the general cost of living they are reflected in wage levels.

As regards the poll tax, the Thatcher government clearly made a major blunder in imposing a tax which had to be physically paid by every adult. Not only was this not cost-effective in capitalist terms (the extra costs of collecting it) but it led to resentment amongst those who had never paid such taxes and in many cases couldn't afford to anyway. In the end a combination of non-payment, riots, demonstrations and the loss of votes in by-elections, caused the government to back down and restore something akin to the old system under which only owner-occupiers paid local taxes.

As to the un-waged, since they depend tor their income mainly on handouts from the state, taxing them does not make much sense from a capitalist point of view - its just taking back part of what's been handed out, so why hand it out in the first place? This is why the government will he introducing so-called "tax credits", under which what is to be paid as tax (if anything) is to be set against what is to be paid as benefit and only the difference paid. So, as with PAYE, the poor will never see the taxes they "pay". Forcing the poor to physically pay a tax like the poll tax doesn't make sense either as the level of income support (formerly supplementary benefit, formerly national assistance, formerly the poor law) is fixed as the minimum supportable level which in theory can't be reduced further."

ITT: People who think tax systems are determined by voter preference as opposed to class leverage.

The only thing the working class needs to demand is more - as long as it's the capitalists' system (ie. up to the point where we have removed them from their golden thrones) it's up to them, not us, to decide how that happens. If they can't solve "more" by shifting things around (and let's face it, more is never satisfied), they'll have to tax the rich.

This "passing on" of costs from workers to employees will only happen if workers actively struggle for it and successfully achieve it. It doesn't just happen automatically. That (SPGB position) sounds like a kind of economic determinism, especially the way it is formulated, i.e. "it follows from this that ...". The capitalists will resist it, and sometimes workers haven't achieved, leaving them forced to survive on less than the standard means necessary for their (and their family's) reproduction, forcing them (or their spouse or oldest children) to obtain another job, or find another way of securing the means necessary for their reproduction.

And on the reverse of the process (decrease in cost of living due to subsidies, deflation, etc.), again, this is dependent on the class struggle; it doesn't just happen automatically, without a fight.

I find this last part (in the parentheses) bizarre. How does income tax distinguish between workers with families and workers without families?

Workers without families don't benefit from free-at-the-point-of-delivery education and healthcare for their children (because they don't have any), nor do they receive child benefit.

Thanks Pikel, but, okay -- and clearly this is in reference only to the UK, not, say, the US -- but do those benefits combined amount to the full "part of wages meant for raising a family"? Perhaps it did at one time -- perhaps at the time the SPGB article was written -- but the way it is written it seems that, again, this whole process is seen as an essentially automatic one, without any political or class struggle involved.

No I'm sure they don't, just as a worker's National Insurance contributions (plus their employer's portion of the same) do not relate directly to the amount of their wage which goes into the pot for their own healthcare, pensions and unemployment benefits. But you know, let's pretend.

(I mean, we're pretending that portions of wages are "meant" for things, so why stop pretending.)