I think increasing the payroll tax is a mistake. People who don’t own a car should actually be rewarded because they pollute far less, they don’t disable workers, they don’t require traffic police, they don’t emit CO2…
I would replace the payroll tax with a weight tax on huge SUVs.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the payroll tax would apply equally to all workers while funding transit, yes? In this case, it functions as an incentive for all people to take transit, since they have already paid for it.
On the whole, this looks like a great step in the right direction. Sure, it could be better - but dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Payroll taxes are notoriously regressive. The wealthy can easily dodge salary as capital gains. Even then payroll taxes usually have a cap at some value so the most you could collect from a person getting a 7 figure salary is .02% of the first 100k or whatever the cap is at.
The stiff working at autozone will pay .02% of his gross paycheck.
A fair point. If presented as a package, I would still support these propositions, though. Like, ideally I want everything funded via land value and pigouvian taxes - but I’ll take my wins where I can get them.