darrell wrote:Vince wrote:Warning: Thread going off on a tangent.
I suspect a fair tax code for a planetary government, let alone a multiple planetary government's tax code, is much more complex from a farmer's point of view, since farmers only get paid when the harvest is brought in and sold.
Since farming is seasonally dependent, each planet would have its own harvest times (plural) based on its own year. And the harvest time for one part of the planet will vary across the planet's surface, depending on the crops and seasons. Even ranching is affected by the seasons, as a lot of animals have a specific time they give birth (lambing, calving, etc. season).
Just consider Earth from the point of view of a planetary government that is tasked with making a fair tax code for agriculture for the entire planet, considering just the date the taxes are due. If the taxes agriculture are to be paid once a year after the harvest (when the farmer/rancher has made money), when in the year are they to be paid?
Seasons vary across the Earth, with the seasons reversed in the northern and southern hemispheres, and the tropical zones having minimal variation in temperature. Then you add in the variation in climate affecting the seasons imposed by the arrangement of continents and the oceans.
For example, North America and Europe have four seasons (winter, spring, summer and autumn). While India has four seasons (winter, summer or pre-monsoon, monsoon or rainy, post-monsoon or autumn) for most of the country, the Himalayan states have an additional season of spring, and Australia has two major climate zones, one of four seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn) and one of two seasons (wet and dry). And South America and Africa each have their own complex set of climates, with continents that straddle both sides of the equator, and with the local seasons profoundly affected by proximity or distance from oceans and seas, the temperatures of those bodies of water, and widely varying distance of an area from the equator. Plus northern Asia with four seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn).
Then add in on top of the seasons the varying crops that are rotated, each with its own harvest time (winter wheat, spring wheat, etc.). Once each of those harvests are successfully brought in, they can then be sold so he can pay his expenses and taxes.
Then we come to some of the expenses for a farm or a ranch being tied to the seasons, while others are on annual basis.
It all becomes very complex for a planetary wide government to set a single fair date when taxes are due for those directly involved in agriculture (the farmer/rancher) as their sole or primary source of earned income (as opposed to investment income such as interest on savings). But while the problem is complex, it isn't impossible to solve, if instead of one date when taxes are due the government sets multiple dates, one for each climate biome.
No government here on Earth has ever had to face the problem on a planetary basis. But a planetary/system government with only one habitable planet in a science fiction universe such as the Honorverse will have to deal with it. The problem simply becomes more involved if multiple habitable planets are part of a system wide government (The Star Kingdom of Manticore both before and after the annexation of Trevor's Star and the Lynx system) or an interstellar government (The Anderman Empire?) that exercises direct control over tax policy of each individual planet. (That excludes the Solarian League as a government, since the League government does not have the ability to tax its citizens directly, but not the individual system governments that are part of the League. It may also exclude the Anderman Empire--we simply have no or insufficient information on how the Empire taxes its citizens. It does not exclude the Star Empire, since we found out in Chapter 14 of Storm From the Shadows that "the citizens of the Talbott Quadrant and of the Star Kingdom would pay both local taxes and imperial taxes.")
We now return you to the regular thread drift.
https://fairtax.org/about/how-fairtax-w ... aQodu3gONwyou are confusing a consumption tax with a value added tax.
with a value added tax, the farmer, baker, grocery store and hungry consumer all pay a tax on the wheat that the farmer grows.
with a consumption tax, only the hungry consumer pays a tax on the wheat that the farmer grows. No tax is paid on exported goods while taxes are paid on imported goods. (cheaper exports and a better balance of trade)
You are missing the point.
The point of my post was solely what is a fair date for the farmer to pay his taxes to his government, taking into consideration he can't pay his taxes if he doesn't have the money to do so on the date they are due, and the reasons why a single date would not necessarily be an optimum solution on a planetary wide basis. I've bolded, and changed the font color to blue in my quoted text so that this is more clear.
1) The farmer pays the tax on his income from the sale of his agriculture products he produced, minus his expenses in producing those products. Whether this is a value added tax or a an annual income tax doesn't make a difference in calculating the tax.
2) The farmer has expenses just to start the crop (seed, fuel, labor, tractor, land, etc.)
3) The farmer only has his agriculture products available to sell when they are ready for harvest (dependent on the seasons of the planet at the location of his farm, and the planting/growing/harvest cycle of the crop (winter wheat is harvested at a different time than spring wheat) and when that crop is safely brought in (incurring expenses to do so).
4) the farmer only has the money available to pay the taxes when the harvest is
SOLD.
The only possible advantage a value added tax might have over an annual income tax is that the farmer will have the money available to pay the taxes due immediately and the planetary government doesn't have to figure out what is a fair date for the farmer to pay his taxes. The farmer, to a certain extent (food is perishable, and there are costs associated with storing it--or in the case of meat animals, delaying sending them to the slaughterhouse) can choose when to pay the taxes by choosing when to sell his crop.
Exports or imports of food don't from the farmer's point of view, he still has to pay taxes on what crops he produced, minus his expenses in producing those crops.
Note: Food in the Honorverse is almost all locally grown with very few exceptions, other than luxury foods as imports or exports. If tomorrow Earth had a planetary government, all the food would be considered locally grown (no imports, no exports).
