Comment by kazinator

The objective reality of the situation is that there is a transaction between a buyer and a seller. That transaction is what pays the tariff, VAT, property transfer tax or whatever vampirical suckage by whatevername.

Both transacting counterparties are robbed.

How that is distributed between them is a matter of which has more alternatives. E.g. if the seller has lots of prospective buyers, most of whom are not subject to the tax, then the market price they demand is not sensitive to the rare buyer who does pay the tax.

If a big fraction of the seller's prospective buyers face a tax, then it makes their product or service look more expensive to a good chunk of the market, which exerts downward pressure on the price. The downward pressure on the price means that the seller effectively pays some of the tax, through lost revenue.

So, the transaction pays the tax as such, but how much of it is distributed between buyer and seller depends on the degree of influence of the tax on the price point.