Bill Gates is seems to be really delving into a tax restructuring. Sadly we do need some tax system to maintain infrastructure. The one I particularly like was taxing automation. Lets face it, people as employees are VERY expensive so I don't blame businesses for wanting to replace me and you with an automated system. But, if you start putting the same taxes on those systems, then companies will bring back people and the money will go to people rather than a coorporate office. Big corp isnt stupid and they know if it was the same price to run a machine as it is a human, they will pick a human bc people want to interact with people.

The consumption tax is indeed interesting. I think it could be beneficial. I disagree that it would destroy the poor because it could be structured like NYC (ie less than 100 dollars in clothing is tax free) and if essential groceries were tax free, then I see where this would not hurt the lower income brackets. So just using NYC alone tells you that the registars are programmed to know what people are buying thus know what to tax people.