Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
For Your Own Good: Taxes, Paternalism, and Fiscal Discrimination in the Twenty-First Century

For Your Own Good: Taxes, Paternalism, and Fiscal Discrimination in the Twenty-First Century

Hoffer, Adam
Nesbit, Todd

Paperback

Investing & FinanceGeneral LawGeneral Political Science

Publisher Price: $24.95

ISBN10: 1942951388
ISBN13: 9781942951384
Publisher: Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Published: Jan 2 2018
Pages: 490
Weight: 1.43
Height: 0.99 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Taxing sin is one of the oldest and most persistent forms of selective taxation. Founding Father and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton is said to have imposed a tax on whiskey before the ink on the US Constitution was dry. Motivated as much by a need to increase revenues as by a desire to do good, politicians often claim that sin taxes will fund projects that promote public health as well as curb unhealthy behavior. Yet sin taxes often represent inefficient public policy and may lead to a host of ill effects and unintended consequences that fail to improve public health and disproportionately hurt the poor. Although selective taxes are politically more popular than other forms of taxation, states that need to raise revenue can find more efficient ways to do so--such as by lowering the tax rate and broadening the tax base. Sin taxes simply don't deliver as advertised: they distort rather than curb undesirable behavior, they have unintended (and harmful) consequences, and they disproportionately hurt low-income taxpayers. And they don't improve public health.

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