Why institute a robot tax when you could just fund the government with corporate and wealth taxes using existing structures? (Rhetorical question; we all know why.)

The U.S. did just fine without an income tax until the 1910s, and the circumstances under which that even happened are suspect, but that’s a tale for another day.

The sheer logistics of a “robot tax” ensure a lack of compliance. Are we charging by the hour while it’s in service (where are the service logs?)? Sheer numbers in the fleet? All options I can come up with are easily gamed; we end up exactly where we were, but lawmakers can say they “did something” instead of the more extreme action of doing something useful.