Because raising progressive taxes that are already high make it likely you’ll trigger a death spiral where high earners flee, raising the taxes you need to levy on the rest, etc.
Yup. I would argue that that death spiral is a feature not a bug. Governments will do every thing they can to hide the extent of their taxation by nickel and diming its citizens, testing the limits of how much can be raised before people flee.
If people could see the some total of the various taxes they pay, they'd be shocked. I'd love it if Stripe or other payment processors started reporting taxes to credit card companies so we could see the total sales and other taxes we paid across all transactions on top of our income taxes.
