How can consumption taxes be made progressive?
This answer simply points out what is, I think, an important part of 1muflon1's answer. There are two ways to think of consumption taxes: One is to tax certain consumption goods with a VAT. Making this progressive is an uphill battle and will cause a lot of distortions that have little to do with distributional concerns. On the other hand, you can simply tax the money spent on consumption, and this can be done in a progressive way. Income equals consumption plus saving. So by making savings tax-exempt, you turn a progressive income tax into a progressive consumption tax.