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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (24549)	7/14/2000 8:55:27 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769669

I am thinking that the consumption tax promoters are excluding a huge block of purchases that they characterize as "investments" - which unfortunately is where most of the rich money goes. Thats why I asked about investment property and stocks - whether the consumption tax would cover those things. I would imagine consumption taxes apply to say, a 60 million $$ Van Gogh or a $2000. bottle of wine. Its easy for politicians to tax things like that, they define them as "luxury goods". But most art buyers are actually museums, and individuals purchasing art are likely investors. So, if you are going to tax art investing then you really can't excluded real estate... and then you have stocks, which technically are portions of a company (hard asset). So to be true to a flat, consumption tax, you would have to tax art, property and stocks - and if you don't, then I can't see how anyone can represent it as fair. It seems impossible to make a case that property is excluded, at the very least - since the intent with consumption taxes is that people who consume more should pay more. We already have an extremely unfair tax system, I can't see any reason to replace the current system with yet another bad system.