Why cant there just be one tax?

Answer 1

One tax would be far too simple. The government bureaucracy is based on layers and layers of people and they thrive when things are NOT simple. They hate simple.. The multiple taxes also allows the bureaucrats to add little taxes to everything you do. If it's only a "little" tax most people won't complain.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, we have more than one government. We have the federal government, the state government, the county government, and the city or local government. They all do things that require tax dollars and they do not get along well with one another.

One of the big problems about having one government do everything and charge everybody the same is that services are never distributed evenly. As a result, money tends to flow from one region to another. This happened many years ago when the federal government was taking in more money than they needed for their operations and they did not want to lower tax rates. They came up with a program called "Revenue Sharing." Under this program, the federal government set up hundreds of ways to give back money to the various states. Unfortunately, the money went to where politicians would get the most help, not where the money came from. This was stopped some time ago, but I hope you get the point.

Answer 3

The government is far to greedy for that. For instance for someone who drives the government taxes the car the gas and other car related things. If there was one tax how do get that money without charging people who don't drive. The government is trying to take every penny they can from you whether you need it or not.