ABSTRACT
Taxes other than the federal income tax are regressive in their incidence: lower income people pay a higher proportion of their incomes than do those at higher levels. Taxes bear on central issues of class and equality in another sense as well. That is, the public goods that taxes provide are so much more equally distributed than the private income which has been taxed that the resulting distribution of all resources is more equal than it would otherwise have been. The particular set of taxes chosen will determine how the cost of government is shared among different groups, and almost everyone feels that others could more fairly be called on to bear a larger share of the total burden. Thus the seemingly dull and technical economic issues of income tax versus sales tax versus property tax have important implications for the patterns of inequality of our society.
