The great fiscal decoupling:

Why robot taxes are no longer Sci-Fi
I’ve been thinking about a massive structural imbalance heading our way. For decades, our tax systems have been human-centric.
We tax work because work was the primary driver of value. Now, AI and automation are beginning to decouple productivity from employment.
The math is getting uncomfortable: In the US alone, roughly 84-85% of federal tax revenue comes from labor, specifically income and payroll taxes.
If AI starts replacing humans at work, that revenue stream vanishes. We are moving from an era of working for a living to an era of owning for a living.
But this creates two existential questions:
1. If you don't own the tech, how do you participate in the prosperity?
2. If the tax revenue vanishes, how do we fund the social contract?
Will AI be taxed as a third-party agent of its owner? Will we see a shift from taxing income to taxing compute or output? Will AI replace taxes all together?
The most likely outcome is an autonomous tax settlement protocol (ATSP) tracking agentic income or the next decade won't just be a tech revolution; it’ll be a total rewrite of the social contract.