‘Taxes’ and ‘transfers’ must be understood jointly.
2AC IMF ’14 [International Monetary Fund; Jan 23; the IMF Is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries; IMF Policy Paper, “Fiscal Policy and Income Inequality,” http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2014/012314.pdf]
33. The impact of tax and expenditure policies on redistribution should be evaluated jointly. Although both taxes and spending can have redistributive implications, the trade-off between efficiency and redistribution will usually differ. Therefore, where the efficiency cost of redistribution through taxes is relatively large, this suggests that these taxes should focus on raising revenue to finance other redistributive instruments. For instance, an increase in regressive taxes can still be the best approach to supporting redistribution if the public expenditures they finance are highly progressive.