Can you be a socialist and support income and consumption taxes?

[CEO Mindset]

Can you be a socialist and still support taxing labor and consumption instead of taxing economic rents such as a land value tax?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

There's certainly no contradiction between being a socialist and supporting taxes on either incomes in excess of that sufficient to provide a basic living or on the consumption of luxuries. Besides, not all socialists support a Georgist land value tax. Indeed, Marx explicitly opposed Georgism as a last ditch attempt to preserve capitalism

[CEO Mindset]

If anything, income or consumption taxes strike me as efforts to preserve capitalism/make socialism less popular by making taxation impact more people on an individual level instead of a land value tax putting the tax burden multi-millionaire landlords/corporations that own skyscrapers/city-blocks.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Of course. Only a very peculiar interpretation of Marxism that's very orthodox in some respects and very heterodox in others would come to the conclusion that income taxes are anti-socialist. In reality, a progressive income tax was one of the first demands of socialist parties as they formed across Europe, and remains one of the primary tools of advancing the material interests of the working class.

Now, consumption taxes are regressive and there's an argument to be made that socialists ought to oppose them, but I'm not necessarily sure I'd go that far.

[PSOL]

Income taxes are a tool to materially keep a level playing field and account for theft done by the upper classes. It was a mistake in the Soviet Union and several other states to do away with such a thing when it was clear that capitalist and feudalist relations still existed both in the countryside and in the bureaucracy, and indeed was getting worse, in the 40s and 50s that Stalin put off correcting until his death and that Kruschev purposefully did not start, same with enacting more democratic reforms and mass outreach 🤔

Income taxes were abolished in more successful states with great effect, such as in Albania and in Cuba for the longest time, but these were positive aberrations that are rare. Until the abolition of Capitalism in its entirety and works to ensure hierarchy stays dismantled, income taxes on party members, independent contractors, and celebrity figures are necessary.

[CEO Mindset]

taxing economic rents does what you claim income taxes do much more effectively imo

it also has the benefit of avoiding putting the paperwork/compliance/payment burden on people who aren't the sort of rich who benefit from the current situation of not taxing economic rents in favor of income/consumption taxes

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

To the extent that you see social democracy in Europe as socialism, it's very much the norm. And even if you don't--provided you don't define socialism as a post-monetary society without taxing and spending--it's self-evident that a cumulatively progressive tax system can (and often should) contain taxes that are individually regressive.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Of course. Only a very peculiar interpretation of Marxism that's very orthodox in some respects and very heterodox in others would come to the conclusion that income taxes are anti-socialist. In reality, a progressive income tax was one of the first demands of socialist parties as they formed across Europe, and remains one of the primary tools of advancing the material interests of the working class.

Now, consumption taxes are regressive and there's an argument to be made that socialists ought to oppose them, but I'm not necessarily sure I'd go that far.

If a government has an extremely expensive redistributive/welfare program that it wants to implement and the country's economy is service-based/post-industrial enough that consumer transactions are genuinely the biggest potential revenue base available, then I think consumption taxes as a primary means of revenue generation can be justified. Not so much situations in which a consumption tax (even in the relatively milquetoast "sales tax" form we have in the US) is levied instead of a perfectly good property tax or income tax increase because high-propensity UMC/PMCs grumble about it less. Or, as Shii Kazuo used to say:

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You can be a socialist and support, or not support, a remarkably wide range of different policies. It isn't a label ascribed to people who hit a certain percentage on a tick-list. Taxation is not a goal in itself, but a policy tool: what matters is what it is used for. A consumption tax that is used to fund social services primarily used by working or lower middle class people is entirely compatible with socialist political ends, though you would not wish for it to be the sole or principle source of funding. A progressive tax (on anything: land, income, it doesn't matter) that is primarily used to fund things that primarily benefit upper middle class people, on the other hand, is not an instrument of socialist policy. And so on.