VAT is regressive. It's the meanest tax, most effective for financing expenditure, because it crowds out income that would otherwise be spent on goods and services. We'll disagree I'm sure, but Elon level wealth is intolerable and we should use wealth taxes to tax it quickly away. 1/

Income taxes are about progressivity and shaping the income and wealth distribution, not financing in the sense of making room for noninflationary expenditure. The standard deduction should be like 150K, and yes, there should be much higher tax brackets with very steep rates. /fin