30 YEARS AGO TODAY: “Tear Down This Wall”
Ryan Abbott (University of Surrey) & Bret N. Bogenschneider (University of Surrey), How Tax Policy Favors Robots over Workers and What to Do About It:
In an article forthcoming in the Harvard Law and Policy Review [Should Robots Pay Taxes? Tax Policy in the Age of Automation] we argue that existing tax policies encourage automation, even when a human worker would otherwise be more efficient than a machine. That’s because automating lets firms avoid wage taxes, which fund social benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Only with human workers are firms responsible for paying taxes on wages to the federal government (and sometimes additional wage taxes at the state or local level) based on an employee’s salary.