A luxury tax is a tax on luxury goods: products not considered essential. A luxury tax may be modeled after a sales tax or VAT, charged as a percentage on all items of particular classes, except that it mainly directly affects the wealthy because the wealthy are the most likely to buy luxuries such as expensive cars, jewelry, etc. It may also be applied only to purchases over a certain amount; for instance, some U.S. states charge luxury tax on real estate transactions over a certain limit. A luxury good may be a Veblen good, which is a type of good for which demand increases as price increases. Therefore, the effect of a luxury tax may be to increase demand for certain luxury goods. In general, however, since a luxury good has a high income elasticity of demand by definition, both the income effect and substitution effect will decrease demand sharply as the tax rises. Theory Luxury tax is based on the concept of positional goods, which are scarce goods whose value arises as status symbols largely from their ranking against other positional goods. This creates a zero-sum game in which the absolute amount of goods purchased is less relevant than the absolute amount of money spent on them and their relative positions. Agents competing in such a game for pure positional goods do not lose utility if some of this money is taken as tax, because their utility comes as status from the amount of money (displayed to be) spent rather than the use-value of the goods themselves. For a pure positional good, a luxury tax is the perfect form of taxation because it raises revenue without reducing the utility of those paying the tax. History In Britain, authorities taxed windows – the window tax – from 1696 to 1851. France imposed window taxes from 1798 to 1926. In the United States, many states used to collect state sales-tax through the use of "luxury tax tokens", instead of calculating a percentage to be paid in cash like the modern-day practice. Tokens could be purchased from the state and then used at checkouts instead of rendering the sales tax in cash. Some tokens were copper or base metal, while some were even plastic. By country Bulgaria A luxury tax of 10% on boats over $300,000 and aircraft over $1 million was proposed in 2010 by finance minister Simeon Djankov. Parliament