It’s easy to denounce the idiocy of a tax. For a simple reason: all taxes are more or less idiotic, in the sense that they all tax people and activities that, in the abstract, it would be desirable not to tax. Things get complicated when, having proudly announced the elimination of an idiotic tax, political leaders go off in search of new revenues to finance the spending that we all, by and large, consider desirable: education, health, roads, pensions. The exercise can then prove perilous—all the more so since with taxes, it’s always possible to come up with something more idiotic. [...]