An analysis done back around 2007 showed that on average, 50% of the cost of everything Americans buy is tax. They looked at something like a dozen products. The only one I remember is the Ford Taurus. What they did was determine the costs, all the way along the supply chain, of any kind of tax, on a per-unit basis. So if the annual property tax of the factory that did final assembly was $1,000,000 and the factory made 100,000 cars, $10 of the price of each car was property tax for that factory. They did this for every kind of direct tax along the chain. They also determined the reduction that would result if the employees paid no income/FICA taxes, but were paid the same amount as their current post-tax income (AKA take-home pay). They did not do it for the indirect effects, such as what would the machinery in the factory would have cost without the same kinds of taxes, which would have further reduced the costs of making the car.
So government, on average, doubles the cost of everything we buy. Government loves indirect taxes, because it is almost impossible to determine how much you actually pay.
He misspelled “cur.”
An analysis done back around 2007 showed that on average, 50% of the cost of everything Americans buy is tax. They looked at something like a dozen products. The only one I remember is the Ford Taurus. What they did was determine the costs, all the way along the supply chain, of any kind of tax, on a per-unit basis. So if the annual property tax of the factory that did final assembly was $1,000,000 and the factory made 100,000 cars, $10 of the price of each car was property tax for that factory. They did this for every kind of direct tax along the chain. They also determined the reduction that would result if the employees paid no income/FICA taxes, but were paid the same amount as their current post-tax income (AKA take-home pay). They did not do it for the indirect effects, such as what would the machinery in the factory would have cost without the same kinds of taxes, which would have further reduced the costs of making the car.
So government, on average, doubles the cost of everything we buy. Government loves indirect taxes, because it is almost impossible to determine how much you actually pay.