I am fully in favour of this bill, so screw you BRTD.
This will help to put somewhat of a dent in the deficit and will raise government revenues without being overtly harmful to Atlasian citizens and to the economy.
I would like to add an amendment to this bill:
The bill shall now read:
National Sin Tax Bill
A 2% sales tax is to be charged on the following items and any products derived from them:
Alcohol, Tobacco, Pornography, Marijuana
There shall be exceptions for any recognized and legitimate uses of alcohol or products derived from alcohol.
Colin, I ask you, what reason do you have for taxing pornagraphy? As far as I can tell you don't have a logical one, just your own arbitrary personal preferences.
I mostly just included it in the amendment because it was included in the original bill. I try to only work one step at a time in changing certain bills in order to make sure that an amendment doesn't fail because I have changed a secondary thing that most other Senators are in favour of.
A second amendment, please withdraw my first amendment:
The bill is rewritten to say:
National Sin Tax Act1. A National Sin Tax shall be levied to provide income for the federal government.
2. The Sin Tax will be set at 2% for cigarettes, alcohol, and chewing tobacco 4% for cigars, pipe tobacco, snuff and other tobacco products and 7% for marijuana and other legalized recreational drugs, users of medical marijuana and other medicinal drugs are exempt from the Sin Tax.
3. This will go into effect immediately upon passage of this bill and will continue until such a time as this bill is repealed or stiken in accordance with other legislation or court rulings.
4. Individual regions may set their own sin taxes as they see fit. The percentage levied may be changed during in the annual budget.
5. The taxes levied in the afformentioned clauses override any current federal sin taxes or other duties on the afformentioned goods unless otherwise exempted by the Senate of Atlasia.
7% on marijuana seemed rather high to me before I thought that number one, no region that I am aware of has approved recreational use of marijuana also no region has thus far passed a tax on marijuana which they are granted the power to do.
4% on cigars is mostly due to their high cost and usually low consumption which means that a higher tax would probably be less likely to effect either the buyers of cigars or the producers of cigars. 4% on snuff and pipe tobacco is mostly to take in a higher profit for the government in some areas where the profits from a 2% tax would be minimal.
The 2% for the most highly used products, alcohol and cigarettes, is taken from the original bill. The lower tax on these along with their higher consumption ensures that their is still good revenue intake from the government without adversly affecting price or the people.
And you're supposed to be libertarian?
Well I think that many things should be legal but I also think that if somethings legal the government has the full right to tax the hell out of it.
