Question

How do you believe taxes affect government economic policy today?
this is my discussion assignment and I don't know where to start.

Answer 1

If you are going to discuss this topic, there are some things you should understand before beginning. You probably understand the idea of taxes.
You will want to find out what taxes are being paid today. There are more than you might realize. Depending on where you live, there are state taxes and Federal taxes.
You may pay income tax, sales tax, gas tax, death tax, gas tax, tax on investments, property tax and now healthcare tax. There are others collected by fire districts, school districts and such.
Business taxes are another area of taxes. Businesses are taxed, generally, at a higher rate than people.
They pay various taxes depending on what the business is. Hotels collect a room tax from each person who stays. Oil is taxed by how much is taken out of the ground. If your business is judged to be a polluter, there is a tax for that.
They pay taxes based on the number of employees. More employees, higher tax. The healthcare law says they have to provide certain levels of insurance for employees. The Supreme Court says it's a tax. Businesses pay into Social Security along with each person. Federal and State governments require equipment or licenses or whatever that has to be paid for to stay in business. Those are all direct or indirect taxes.

Once you have some kind of idea of all the different ways people and businesses are taxed, you can start thinking about economic policy. What is our governments economic policy. Generally, the more a thing is taxed the less that thing or activity is produced.
Or people and businesses try to get around the tax. So the higher taxes go, the more incentive there is to cheat or find a way not to pay.

I'm not sure where you go to find out our current economic policy. Here's some facts you might want to find more about. Our government spends more than it takes in. That's not politics, that's the math. Politicians promise to create jobs, take care of every body's problems, pay all their bills, build up the military, fix the streets or make America great. Those are all good and everything, but we have been spending more than we take in for a long time. So what ever policy they say they follow, they all just spend and spends. Some body may want to spend less, but the less is always more than what we bring in.
And every new tax goes for a new program, not for paying off the debt.
So that's some idea of where you could start.