Comment by yibg
5 days ago
Taxes aren't just there to provide an income stream to the government. It's also a mechanism to guide behavior via incentives (or punishment). Right or wrong there we're providing an incentive to hold assets longer, or use less fuel or buy from domestic producers etc.
IIRC, this was one of the main arguments for the Articles of Confederacy, the states were pretty nervous about this exact situation.
This was reaffirmed by Marshall [1] with the famous “the power to tax involves the power to destroy."
[1] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/mcculloch-v-mar...