More then any other tax? How so?
Okay. I will indulge you as a matter of general clarification. Income taxes are claims on your life without your approval. The federal government literally gets first dibs on using your life for its own ends whatever those ends may be. So, you spend a portion of your life converting it into some product, whether tangible or otherwise, and before you even touch the fruits of your own life the government steals a portion for itself. By threat of law the government forces you to tell it how much you make and a host of other deeply private information. You have no direct choice in any of this. Income taxes are anti-libertarian at their core and yet so-called "libertarians" like you empty-headedly defend them. There are few real libertarians in America.
A consumption tax gives the individual greater privacy and freedom of choice (not to mention the added incentive to save and invest, since production is not taxed). You choose when to pay taxes by your choosing to spend, and the government can never force you to divulge anything.
I am not suggesting a VAT. I am suggesting something like an NRST. Actually, I am interested in first seeing a change in tax and spending philosophy away from your myopic leftist flat income tax so that we begin to work to protect the freedoms lost to us as a result of your sort of paradigm. We need a serious paradigm shift away from sharecropping. I am thinking of some variant of the plan discussed here cats.org.
"In 1994, the CATO Institute released a study by Dr. Lawrence Kotlikoff of Boston University on the affect of replacing the income tax with a National Retail Sales Tax. In the study, Dr. Kotlikoff showed the positive effects this change would have on the U.S. national savings rate. He went on to show how savings are the key to long-term economic growth and living standards.
"CATO's Fiscal Policy Studies Director, Stephen Moore, aggressively promoted the sales tax solution. He appeared on talk radio shows, wrote editorials and articles, and spoke to grassroots groups from business and local communities.
"Congress began to echo the growing call for fundamental tax reform. Representative Sam Gibbons (D-FL) at that time the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Ways and Means, appeared in a CATS video explaining that in his over 25 years of working with the income tax, he had come to the conclusion that the income tax '...is flawed in its conception, it is conceptually wrong and can't be fixed.'
"Congressman Dan Schaefer (R-CO) and Congressman Billy Tauzin (D-LA) picked up the issue, each publishing editorials and appearing on both local and national television on this issue. Schaefer stated, 'This could be the idea of the decade.' Tauzin commented, 'I'll be the first Member of Congress to vote to scrap the income tax.'
"After the 1994 mid term elections, Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer (R-TX) stunned the press corps with the announcement that he wanted to replace the current income tax system with a consumption tax like the National Retail Sales Tax. He further went on to utter the now famous lines, 'My goal is to tear the income tax out by its roots and throw it on the side of the road.'
"In 1995, CATS National Chairman Vic Krohn worked as part of a coalition to hammer out the particulars that would meet the various political considerations raised around the issue of instituting a national retail sales tax. And in 1996 The Schaefer/Tauzin, National Retail Sales Tax Act (HR 3039) was introduced into Congress. CATS Members came from all across the country to be part of this historic occasion.
cats.org.
The flat tax has been associated with solid conservative thinking for decades (and opposed by most every 'leftist'), because it is not a 'progressive' (tax the rich at higher rates) kind of tax... but don't let the facts get in the way of a good fantasy, Pilchie! LOL!
Pshaw. Most 'solid conservatives' are just soft leftists, spending to the same heedless degree as hard leftists and levying taxes in the same intrusively leftist way.
Here you hilariously even DISAGREE WITH YOURSELF! (Earlier you proposed numerous items to exempt from your proposed 'consumption tax'... including: food, medicine, and God-knows-what-else. All would require massive record-keeping.)
An NRST variant would require no more record keeping than is required by current sales taxes. The feds need not track anything, but simply receive the revenue from merchants, which is currently the case at the state level. On exemptions I have not 'disagreed' with myself. I merely mentioned the exemption of certain goods as an example of what might be possible. There need be no exemptions at all for the paradigm to work. But exemptions could and should be considered.
HaHaHaHaHaHaHA!!!!!!!!! (You faith in bureaucrats is touching, though more then a bit misguided.
It is not a faith in bureaucrats, but a faith in a new consumption-based tax paradigm.
The IRS themselves has estimated the increased numbers of government workers that would be required to track value-added taxes, and or other forms of consumption taxes. So has the Heritige Foundation... so, too, the example of nations which actually USE such a complicated tax system.)
Well, I have never once suggested a VAT. You ought to spend more time considering your opponents' point of view and less time referencing monsters that do not exist and cackling HAHAHAHAH!!!! and HYPERVENTILATING, trying to substitute YELLING and SCREAMING for arguments!!!!!!! You know, all of this mindless screaming is textbook leftist behavior, and simply detracts from your **ahem** "presentation."
You support a big, new, complicated tax system that intrudes the federal government into every economic transaction of the economy... and massively extends federal power and grows the bureaucracy.
Well, okay then.
I DON'T. I propose massively simplifying the tax system, with the wholesale elimination of corrupt loopholes and special interest preferences, lowering rates, and treating all income the same.
The only common way income should be treated is for the government to keep its friggin' hands off of it, and yet you are actually screaming in defense of having the government force you to divulge to it all income figures so that it can take income from you. Today's so-called "Libertarians" are pathetic leftists indeed.
YOUR'S is a 'leftist' Western European-style 'solution' to financing the government... mine a free market, limited government plan.
Well, okay then.
A cute, but totally disingenuous slip-slide. Black Markets and underground economies certainly DO EXIST... and your plan to finance the federal government through consumption taxes would MASSIVELY INCREASE OURS.
Ahhh. The old "people are gonna break the law, so let's just enslave everyone" argument. Your claim is not necessarily true. But even if it were true it is still no reason to force the American people to be flat tax sharecroppers. People will always break the law, just as they do now.
I am not 'trusting' in some kind of deus ex-machina rescue from the totalitarian Big Brother State --- I'm merely pointing out the factually OBVIOUS: a government CANNOT grow so much that it totally absorbs all sectors of the economy, all private economic actions.
But why did you even point it out? Har har har. You tend lose the thread of your own argument much too easily to be taken seriously. Okay, Buddy. I am really bored by this. But I just wanted you to see, for a change, how a real Libertarian should think.
R-I-G-H-T... I'm SURE there will NEVER be the need for an AUDIT! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well of course audits don't require tracking of trade transactions as they happen. Audits may generally take place in response to apparent reporting discrepancies, just like today. So when merchants send revenue to the feds, that merchant needs to make sure his books are in order, just as today. Typically, nothing will happen, but should the Feds decide to audit, they will simply review the transactions of a particular merchant to make sure he is sending the proper revenue - which is exactly what happens today. Essentially nothing changes for anyone, except that the vast majority of Americans will live completely outside of the tax administration system. This would not be the case under a leftist flat tax system that taxes the literal income of every single producer in America.
Big Government, Big Brother Pilchie!!!!!!!!!
Well okay then.
(I have already pointed-out that it is TRUE when you say the 'wealthy would pay more then the poor' under a consumption tax...
Well there ya go then.
WHAT YOU CONVENIENTLY FAIL TO MENTION IS THAT IS THAT BOTH 1) AS A PROPORTION OF THEIR INCOME, and 2) AS A PROPORTION OF THE TAXES RAISED, YOUR PROPOSED 'CONSUMPTION TAX' WOULD REDUCE THE TAX BURDEN ON THE WEALTHY --- RELATIVE TO THE POOR --- AND WOULD *INCREASE* THE TAX REVENUE EXTRACTED FROM THE POOR AND MIDDLE CLASS.)
My. You really are out to get wealthy folks' income. Gotta take that income from the rich folks. There is just something about folks' ability to produce that gets you leftists all in a tizzy to stick it to the guy who produces more than others. The level of a person's production should not matter here at all. It is the level of consumption that ought to matter.
Here is one very simple example of how easy it would be for the rich to avoid taxes: instead of buying a personal jet here in the States... I would merely need to purchase and take delivery overseas. Then I could fly my property back, all tax free.
Well, this is no great issue. The fact that the product will be used in America, in federally controlled airspace, would mean it would incur a tax, perhaps a one-time tax, as it enters the country via Customs. There would be no increase in complexity or in the size of bureacracy since the structures to tax foreign goods already exist and could be maintained.
I don't think any tax system will be problem free. The NRST would have problems. The problems should be debated and ironed out as much as possible. The main thing I am interested in is seeing Americans agree to shift away from despising income, saving and investing and focus on taxing consumption. So-called "Libertarians" ought to get with the program and be real libertarians for a change, instead of yelling and screaming like leftists for continuation of scummy leftism.
Alrighty. I can honestly say I had a nice discussion here, since I was the only one doing the thinking. |
