VAT hurts, but not as much as taxing income. People do not like consumption taxes, but even with high VAT, they still consume, while taxing employment or corporate incomes hurts economies more because they have a stronger impact on economic activity.

Land value tax would be even better, because the land does not run away or stop working. How's that in Greece?

VAT is easier to "cheat" than income tax. Just don't buy stuff in your own country.

Land Value tax makes the rich pay a lot but hits the poorest really hard since the threshold to owning land (and creating wealth) is substantially raised.

> Land Value tax makes the rich pay a lot but hits the poorest really hard since the threshold to owning land (and creating wealth) is substantially raised.

That seems a bizarre statement. Firstly I don't see any connection between owning land and creating wealth. Secondly taxing land value is a deterrent to land ownership and should reduce the desirability of owning land and reduce the price of land. This will make it more cheaply available to productive use and reduce the incentive to hoard land unproductively. Finally the poorest cannot afford to own land anyway so are not affected by the land taxes.

Have I missed something?

BTW I largely agree about cheating VAT especially in a small country with neighbouring countries that can be cheaply visited.

What I'm trying to say is that social mobility will be severely stunted.

We can agree that the reason for owning land is to make money, yes? Planting crops would take a couple of months to return the initial investment. If I planted a forest it could take years.

If this investment possibility is removed from everyone without (massive amounts of, if the tax is high enough) capital it's going to create a further wealth gap for no apparent reason.

> Finally the poorest cannot afford to own land anyway so are not affected by the land taxes.

Yes, this is true for the poorest, bad phrasing on my part, but it is going to make the barrier of entry higher.

Also: land produces goods that everyone need the same amount of (food, wood, wool), this would increase prices in a way that wouldn't really bother the capital heavy but would seriously hurt the already poor.

Land can make money purely by rising value over time so people can speculate by owning land. There may be little incentive to actually use the land.

The ROI on a forest takes years whether or not the land value is taxed. You also said earlier that it was a tax on land value so presumably much lower for forestry land than urban land.

The primary impact of a land value tax is likely to be on the price of land itself because land will be less profitable. Introduction or increase will hurt those who own land (and its abolition would benefit land owners).

If we assume that the cost of access to land (rent) is set by the free market then we can assume that demand is essentially unchanged and the supply of land would if anything be increased (if some speculators sell or start to rent out their land) so access to land for the less wealthy should be cheaper.

I think your assumption that ownership is the way that less wealthy access land is fundamentally wrong. I think that this will also apply to the effect on prices of things made on the land on which I expect little impact (although there may be side effects on the rental market that make this more complicated).

> The US doesn't have a VAT, but it does have a sales tax,

As someone from Oregon... that definitely varies by jurisdiction, as your link shows :-)