Candy tax on mineral water

The Finnish government is bringing back the so-called "candy tax", i.e. a specific tax for sweets. However, the definition of "sweets" seems rather odd: it includes not just candy, but also things like lemonades, and any bottled water, including mineral water. Also, fruit juices will be taxed. However, other sweet (and somewhat unhealthy) things like biscuits and bakery products would be excluded.

I don't really mind the price of candy as such: sweets are today incredibly cheap if you look at historical price trends, and they put a burden on people's health. The purchasing power of children and adolescents enables them to get ridiculously large amounts of candy. But still, I feel very reluctant about guiding people's behaviour with taxes, because the side effects are often excessive and generally, I'd prefer that people are responsible for their own lives, not the state.

The food industry proposes that instead of the candy tax, there should be a sugar tax. I must admit that this makes a lot more sense than taxing mineral water as "candy".

What needs covering up?

Once again, the news is filled with the economist dream idea of setting a tax on living in your own apartment (because you don't pay rent, so you get an advantage, which could be taxable income).

Well, the idea is absurd. Of course, from a theoretical, economist standpoint it makes sense. So do communism and fascism, but still, they don't work either. After all, how much could we be taxed on the theoretical income we gain when we drink tap water on meals, and not not cognac? Think how much the state loses in taxes!

I hope this tax idea will not be approved, whatever government there is, but my question is, what else is happening in the country that needs covering up? What is it that is not wanted in the news, if this bi-annual provocation needs to be brought up?

Carbon and VAT carousel

Some fraud-prone industries, such as mobile phone trading or the construction industry, have or are going to have a reverse VAT charging scheme in many countries:

Helsingin Sanomat about construction industry VAT frauds frauds
Channel Register about mobile phone VAT frauds

Now it looks like carbon emission trading is among the very same group of fraud-prone industries, and perhaps even more so:

Irish Times writes about sizeable VAT fraud in carbon trading 

However, even this VAT reversal doesn't make the fundaments right: emission trading is - particularly in the way it is set up - a pretty dim idea. A simple tax on whatever emissions are deemed harmful would be better, and wouldn't be a simple license to print money for whoever was blowing most CO2 into the atmosphere at a certain moment way back in past.

Likewise, Finland has a rather idiotic scheme regarding the taxation of carbon emissions from vehicle fuel: cars with higher nominal emission ratings have a higher tax percentage. But this system is complex and produces unpredictable results. A simpler and more fair approach would be to just tax the fuels (and not just car fuels, but any fossil fuels - the atmosphere, if it cares about carbon at all, doesn't really know where the carbon came from, right?)

Thus, consuming more fuel would collect more tax, in a foolproof way - instead of relying on rules and ratings and a car tax plus annual vehicle taxes that even the car shops cannot calculate reliably (thus, when you ask the price of a new car, you get an approximation because they can't tell the tax exactly!)