Most modern economies have Payroll Tax, where every time a business pays an employee, a additional percentage of that is paid as tax to the government.
It might be a lot or a little. It might be a federal or a local tax. Sometimes it only applies to larger businesses. But its existence it is pretty standard.
Ostensively it is a way of businesses to contribute to social security, to help their workers. In reality it just means they pay workers less. The only genuine benefit it could have is giving an advantage to smaller, local businesses who might not need to pay it.
In recent times Robot Tax has become a popular meme, to stop or reduce robots from stealing jobs. It is sometimes mentioned that robots have appeal because they do not incur payroll tax. No, robots have appeal because they can be cheaper overall. Payroll tax is a negligible factor.
So, they say, lets tax robots! None say exactly how they would do this. They are perhaps imaging a humanoid robot who sits at a desk and replicates a clerk’s job. No, robots come in all different shapes and sizes. How much would you tax a Roomba? Or a dishwasher? Or a drone?
Taxes are used to make undesirable things less appealing, less profitable. We often forget that the alternative is to subsidise the things we prefer.
So let’s turn things upside down and reward businesses for employing people, instead of taxing them for it.
Let’s pay businesses a UBI based on full-time employees, regardless of how much they are paid.
Why not a tax break, based on employees? Well, that would work fine in the current system. But in a future system with different types of money, we can pay the Business UBI with money that can only be spent on certain things, like employee health, renewable energy, public transport passes, safety audits… it is only limited by imagination.
Studies show that, in general, reward achieves more than punishment. Imagine the difference in the mood of your boss if she is receiving a check instead of having to write one.