It holds that taxpayers should pay for public services according to the benefits they receive. It s only fair, for example, for a family that uses municipal water lavishly to pay more than a family that uses it sparingly. Governments can install water meters to monitor individual water usage, but general benefits such as public schooling, public safety and environmental protection must be paid for through taxes that distribute costs equitably among people in a community. Flat taxes are far more regressive than the recently phased-out food tax, retail sales taxes or any other sales tax, Liner wrote. They are levies usually imposed as an identical amount per household by counties and municipalities without regard to the extent of services received by taxpayers.
Flat taxes violate both of the commonly held principles of tax fairness.
They are imposed without regard to the level of public services received, and the poorest taxpayer pays the same amount as the richest taxpayer, Liner wrote. Historical N.C. examples, now abandoned, were taxes on acres of land owned regardless of their value and poll taxes, which were levied as the same amount per person. Indeed, the total amount of flat taxes levied can exceed the amount those families paid in state sales taxes on food and can be substantial when compared with property taxes they pay on their homes. Moreover, the potential for these amounts to grow, and for the use of flat taxes to expand, is very great. However, public revenue sources have to be judged not solely by how much revenue they raise and how politically expedient they are but also by how equitably they distribute the costs of providing public services among the people of the community.