A well-functioning democracy will not think about double taxing anything.
Is there actually a well functioning democracy? To me it seems like a rigged game all the way through, regardless of what country it concerns.
My overall net worth in terms of fiat value (concerns savings, stocks, bonds, precious metals, crypto, etc) gets taxed year after year after year. The government doesn't care whether you gained net worth or lost it, as long as your net worth tops their set limits, you'll get taxed. It's the worst possible form of theft, especially with how you can't do anything about it.
If you refuse to pay what's due, your bank accounts will be frozen, and they'll seize the income from your employer till your "debt" is cleared. That's why I'm glad 75% of my net worth is in Bitcoin. I efficiently made sure that they won't be able to ruin my life by freezing/seezing all my legacy assets and accounts.
No, there is not, otherwise, we probably wouldn't be here complaining about the current system.
My reply was mainly addressed at the OP who said:
Quote
The measure of a well-functioning democracy is a tax system that fairly apportions its burdens.
as I don't think in a democracy we should have proportions.In my country, we have a flat 4.5% tax that goes to health coverage, and to me it doesn't sound too fair seeing one guy paying 500 euros and another 50 and getting the same treatment.
I'm pretty sure the guy with an x10 contribution won't get 10 kidney transplants and the other one just one. Of course, it's impossible also to make everyone pay for it equally and have a viable health system ...so we're back to the utopia that will never be.
As for the tax, if I buy a house worth 100 000 which I'm going to leave to my son, I'm already paying another 100 000 as income taxes before making those, I'm paying another 11 000 in VAT, around 300 euros in local taxes and mandatory insurance every year and then my son will have to pay 25-50% inheritance tax?
Insane is a mild word for this, we're paying it already 3 times, and what do we get in return ?!
I'm no Trump or any other Forbes T100 fan, but I can understand them in this situation.
If (and only if) blockchain become mainstream then maybe the tax system would be like ICO system, there will be proposals, people vote on smart-contract, then fund release if cap reached.
Just no!
ICO's have screwed enough people already, we don't need an ICO to ruin an entire country.
You don't need tokens or crypto or a blockchain to run a modern tax system. The blockchain is a simple distributed database, we already have those in almost every developed country, no need for fancy words schemes.