To the negative, Europe's value added tax is very regressive.
Most state and local sales taxes are very regressive, with low-income families paying more as a percentage of their income.
"If you look at the language the court has used, it's very regressive," said Tenzing Chusang, from the Women's Rights Initiative, a lawyers' collective.
He acknowledged this idea would be "controversial" but said it would "help poorer people very directly, because indirect taxes are very regressive because everyone has to pay them".
Sales and excise taxes, on the other hand, are very regressive, and property taxes are somewhat regressive.
The tax exclusion for health benefits is not as regressive as most analysts claim, and repealing it is very regressive, at least for workers whose employers don't slash benefits to get their plans under the cap.
These contributions are very regressive since they are often fixed at a flat amount and hence impose a higher burden of NHIS payments on the poor [ 12].
These findings confirm that OOP payments in low-income countries are very regressive as documented in other settings [ 4, 28, 29], and highlight the urgent need to protect the poor from high costs of illness.
Relying heavily on pricing can be very socially regressive too, with the rich able to absorb high environmental prices and the poor disproportionately hurt.
