什麼是銷售稅?

消費稅(或：銷售稅)是政府向消費品徵收的稅項，可從批發商或零售商徵收。銷售稅是典型的間接稅。

A sales tax is a state or locality imposed percentage tax on the selling or renting of certain property or services. The fraction of the total taxes collected as sales taxes typically varies from about 25% to 50% of government revenue. Nearly all sales taxes have a large lists of goods and services, varying from state to state, that the tax is not collected on. Because the tax is collected from the customer, it is a consumption tax. In the United States, it is nearly always explicitly added on and not included in the price, a notable exception is sales taxes on gasoline. If a person purchases property from an out-of-state seller, sales tax is not due, but rather the customer may owe a so-called use tax. For example, if a person purchases a computer from a local brick-and-mortar retail store, the store will charge the state's sales tax. However, if that person purchases a computer over the internet or from an out-of-state mail-order seller, sales tax may not apply to the sale, but the person could possibly owe a use tax on the purchase. Because of exclusions on what is taxed and not taxed the typical consumer will pay on average about 1/3 of the listed sales tax on all his/her expenditures, i.e. a 7.5% tax will collect on average about 2.5% of a persons income.[citation needed] The sales tax revenues are typically split into several fractions going to the state, schools, counties, cities, public transit and possibly other jurisdictions. The size and split of these fractions vary significantly from state to state except in the states that do not have a sales tax. Additional taxes like Hotel tax, Rental car use fee, etc. that are really disguised sales taxes are imposed typically on non voting visitors to a given location.

Ideally, a sales tax (under whatever name it's called) is fair, has a high compliance rate, is difficult to avoid, is charged exactly once on any one item, is simple to calculate and simple to collect. A conventional or retail sales tax attempts to achieve this by charging the tax only on the final retail transactions, not on intermediate businesses buying raw materials for production or finished goods for resale. This prevents so-called tax "cascading" or "pyramiding," in which an item is taxed more than once as it makes its way from production to final retail sale. Sales tax collection is well established in nearly all retail establishments and typically has a high tax compliance record in the United States. Many consider the sales tax as being nearly ideal since it taxes consumption but allows savings to grow untaxed.

Sales taxes are considered by some as regressive, that is, low income people tend to pay a greater percentage of their income in sales tax than higher income people, because they tend to spend a higher percentage of their income on taxed items. Others consider them one of the best taxes since they only tax consumption. In many locations items such as food, or prescription drugs are exempt from sales taxes to alleviate the burden on the poor. The loss of income is made up in other tax sources.