If we want to look more to taxes on behavior we want to discourage, then we have to consider the sales tax. I have never heard anyone, liberal or conservative, claim that Americans save and invest too much and consume too little. The Streamlined Sales Tax plan recognizes that sales taxes are unnecessarily complex. States must radically simplify their sales tax codes and administrative requirements. Technology may have made the sales tax the most viable and collectible of the three major taxes, especially if credit cards remain the payment method of choice.
Technology also allows simple calculation, collection and distribution of sales taxes to states.
Software companies already provide these services to large retailers such as Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney and Sears. Some believe that most aspects of the Streamlined Sales Tax system could be implemented without any legislation by Congress, but NACo, the NGA and other groups are working with Congress to authorize an Interstate Sales and Use Tax Compact. States joining the compact would be required to adopt a simplified sales tax system. In turn, those states would be authorized to require remote sellers above a threshold volume to collect use tax on all taxable sales into a state. Ironically, the same technologies that make Internet commerce possible also make sales tax collection so simple that it is not an unconstitutional undue burden on interstate commerce.