Personal Tax

European countries tend to rely more on consumption taxes than does the United States. Most of them raise a significant amount of government revenue through a value-added tax, or a VAT. A VAT is like the retail sales tax that many U.S. states use, but rather than collecting all of the tax at the retail level when the consumer buys the final good, the government collects the tax in stages as the good is being produced (that is, as value is added by firms along the chain of production). Various U.S. policymakers have proposed that the tax code move further in direction of taxing consumption rather than income. In 2005, economist Alan Greenspan, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve, offered this advice to a presidential commission on tax reform: “As you know, many economists believe that a consumption tax would be best from the perspective of promoting economic growth—particularly if one were designing a tax system from scratch—because a consumption tax is likely to encourage saving and capital formation. However, getting from the current tax system to a consumption tax raises a challenging set of transition issues.”

1: What should be taxed – Personal Income or Personal Consumption and why? Provide your opinion based on the case.
2: How may it affect Saudi Economy if an income tax is imposed in KSA?

Q2: Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Human Resources recently announced an increase to the monthly minimum wage from 3000 SAR to 4000 SAR for full-time Saudi workers in April 2021, and introduced a Labor Reform Initiative (LRI) scheduled to take effect on 14th March 2021.

Discuss the implications of the above topic.
Will this impact unemployment in the country? How?