&gt; Why not finance helping quadriplegics from increased VAT?<p>Because VAT, beside being a very effective tax (it&#x27;s the biggest source of income of most countries), is the most unfair one.<p>Say a country have a 20% VAT<p>Low income household need to use the entirety of their income to survive (food, housing, etc). So effectively 20% of their income is collected as VAT.<p>Now a upper class household, let&#x27;s say they save 25% of their income each month as retirement plans etc, and spend the rest.<p>They&#x27;ve been effectively taxed at 20% of 75% of they income, so their effective VAT rate was 15%.<p>While you often see very high income people advocate for flat rate tax instead of progressive tax, none of them have the nerve to propose a reversed progressive tax like VAT is, where poor people pay proportionally more than rich people.