Posted on 01/06/2005 1:50:57 PM PST by Remember_Salamis
The article says that Linder reintroduced the Fair Tax in the House today. Does anyone know anything about that? H. R. # or anything?
Actually it was introduced on the 4th, under HR25.
Hasn't shown up on Thomas yet, as GPO is abit behind with something over 200 bill introductions from the House alone on that day.
I am a great admirer and supporter of Dr. Alan Keyes, who was quoted in the text of your post the following:
>Leaders who find themselves with governmental power over a servile people will be quick to conclude that such a people exist to serve them<
I would like to ask Dr. Keyes, why would such leaders give up that kind of power? I cannot, in view of what has been going on in the past few years, conceive of that happening.
I do not resent paying taxes to support my country. However I do resent paying taxes to support programs which are now obsolete but still being funded; programs also such as the National Education Administration which dictates how my children will be educated , er "dumbed down", (education should be taken care of locally); paying social security and other welfare to illegal aliens; Planned Parenthood which murders babies made in God's image to name just a few.
If these programs and giveaways were sunsetted, the government would'nt need so many of our dollars, no matter how they are collected.
LOL!!! Yep, there it is!!!
Cradle-to-grave "rebate" checks from the Social Security system!!!
Just what we need (NOT!!!) to make taxation "fair".
If you were serious about "letting us keep the money we earn", you'd simply lower the sales tax rate and NOT COLLECT any excess that had to be rebated.
But that's just ONE of the phoney contortions that's embedded in this fraudulent "reform" scam.
The USA would become the world's tax haven. You want jobs? You'll have jobs.
No doubt about that, back when they were first investigating the retail sales tax for implementation into actual legislative form, Bill Archer brought up a solid point about the NRST as foreign manufacturers viewed it:
Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee,
Rep. Bill Archer (R-TX)
August 12, 1996
- "A recent survey was done, in Europe and Japan, of the major corporations and I was astounded at the results. They were asked, 'If the US abolished its income tax and went to a sales tax, would that have any impact on your decisions?' Eighty percent of the corporations said they would build their factories in the United States of America. Twenty percent said they would move their international headquarters to the United States of America."
Add to that the myriad agencies that "regulate" with the force of law with an unelected CLOSED PROCESS group that we HIRE AND PAY to rip us off and stop us from doing what we want and need to do.
Example, the EPA.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
NOBODY has to pay because EVERYBODY gets their monthly SS rebate checks...
Where have we heard THIS line of BS before?
I would like to ask Dr. Keyes, why would such leaders give up that kind of power? I cannot, in view of what has been going on in the past few years, conceive of that happening.
They do when the alternative is having no power at all, as when voted out of office. As far as this relates to the NRST, take a look at politics in Texas & Georgia sometime. You can't hardly run as a Republican on a national level unless you are committed to then NRST.
It, as always, is up to the American electorate in the final analysis.
"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
- Plato -
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819)
- "The power of taxing the people and their property is essential to the very existence of government, and may be legitimately exercised on the objects to which it is applicable, to the utmost extent to which the Government may choose to carry it. The only security against the abuse of this power is found in the structure of the Government itself. In imposing a tax, the legislature acts upon its constituents
Champion v. Ames(1903), 186 U.S. 321
- 'But if what Congress does is within the limits of its power, and is simply unwise or injurious, the remedy is that suggested by Chief Justice Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden [21 US 1, 9 Wheat. 1, 6 L. ed. 23], when [195 U.S. 27, 56] he said: 'The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections, are, in this, as in many other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, the sole restraints on which they have relied, to secure them from its abuse. They are the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments."
Excellent point! Let's pray that GWB follows through on his promise to decrease the size of government.
If these programs and giveaways were sunsetted, the government would'nt need so many of our dollars, no matter how they are collected.
The rub of that nubbin lays in the fact that a large percentage of the electorate does not peceive a cost to themselves in such,
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw
therefore, no sunset, and the programs will perpetuate as long as there is a constituency for spending as a consequence of the preception that it is that other guy behind the tree paying the freight.
That is the basc political premise of any tax with an overt exclusion or exception to paarticipation and why VATs, flat taxes and other such schemes for obstensibly pushing tax onto the guy behind the tree work so well for the politician.
| "As a matter of fact, what the income tax does — and this is the debate that I think we always try to get into in order to let you and him fight, see — and the people of this country are led down a path where the actual control of their resources, which in the end is the control over their will, is handed off to the government." . . . "The government then manipulates that will in order to destroy the freedom of our electoral system through the income tax structure, and we call the resulting slavery a free system." "In point of fact, it is not as the founders understood, and the only way to restore real freedom is to give people back control over the income that they earn so that they won‘t, at the voting booth and in other phony issues, be subject to that manipulation." |
Thank you, AG. I agree with so much of what you say. However, with how people have been "educated", in large part, over the past 30 years, it seems to me a miracle that Dubya was actually re-elected. As said on another post regarding his promise to decrease the size of government, I think some of that needs doing either before or at the same time as tax reform. Wouldn't bet on it, though.
The Repubs on "the Hill", as the majority, need to exersize their voting muscle in these needed reforms.
We shall see what we shall see.
The point of this seems to be privacy. *Somebody* has to report income to the Social Security Administration in order to calculate benefits. I would say this argument evaporated, but it only existed due to your ignorance.
The total rate will also be higher because none of the flat tax proposals include the FICA.
This is false.
The retail price of the item consists of the cost of labor, the cost of capital (profits), and taxes. Therefore, a national sales tax taxes all of these at a confiscatory rate of 23%.
The flat tax does not tax taxes (i.e. the flat tax does not cascade over property tax, gas tax, or whatever taxes businesses pay). The lower flat tax rate is applied to the profits. Only the cost of labor has the payroll tax associated with it. The overall result is that the flat tax provides a lower overall tax rate even when considering payroll taxes.
The Repubs on "the Hill", as the majority, need to exersize their voting muscle in these needed reforms.
It's about time for to do abit of that pushing to get em moving.
It just sometimes requires an attention getter, such as smack between the eyes with a 2x4 to arouse em out of their stupor ;O)
Please give me an example of an illicit transaction that would be captured by a sales tax. Do you really think a john pays sales tax to a hooker for a trick? Just think about your state sales tax today. Drug deals aren't taxed. No illegal activity is taxed.
At least the flat tax would capture some of the raw materials (like fertilizer for pot plants) legitimately purchased and converted to the underground economy.
The total rate will also be higher because none of the flat tax proposals include the FICA.
This is false.
Have a bill number? I haven't found one yet that repeals SS/Medicare taxes.
The lower flat tax rate is applied to the profits. Only the cost of labor has the payroll tax associated with it.
Flat tax has two parts remember? A tax on business income and tax on wage income.
The Flat Tax; Chapter 3, by Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka
| In our system, all income is classified as either business income or wages (including salaries and retirement benefits). The system is airtight. Taxes on both types of income are equal. The wage tax has features to make the overall system progressive. Both taxes have postcard forms. The low tax rate of 19 percent is enough to match the revenue of the federal tax system as it existed in 1993, the last full year of data available as we write. Here is the logic of our system, stripped to basics: We want to tax consumption. The public does one of two things with its income—spends it or invests it. We can measure consumption as income minus investment. A really simple tax would just have each firm pay tax on the total amount of income generated by the firm less that firm’s investment in plant and equipment. The value-added tax works just that way. But a value-added tax is unfair because it is not progressive. That’s why we break the tax in two. The firm pays tax on all the income generated at the firm except the income paid to its workers. The workers pay tax on what they earn, and the tax they pay is progressive. To measure the total amount of income generated at a business, the best approach is to take the total receipts of the firm over the year and subtract the payments the firm has made to its workers and suppliers. This approach guarantees a comprehensive tax base. The successful value-added taxes in Europe work this way. The base for the business tax is the following: Total revenue from sales of goods and services less purchases of inputs from other firms less wages, salaries, and pensions paid to workers less purchases of plant and equipment The other piece is the wage tax. Each family pays 19 percent of its wage, salary, and pension income over a family allowance (the allowance makes the system progressive). The base for the compensation tax is total wages, salaries, and retirement benefits less the total amount of family allowances. |
While the SS/Medicare taxes add additional burdens on wage, both on the business side as an excise on the act of employing and paying a wage, and on the employee's side as a tax on income received.
Do you really think a john pays sales tax to a hooker for a trick? Just think about your state sales tax today. Drug deals aren't taxed. No illegal activity is taxed.
Not the issue, as when that hooker or drug dealer goes out to buy anything in a legitimate business they do indeed pay a retail sales tax, where today they pay no income taxes on their illicit gains at all.
Remember it is the customer that pays the tax in a retail sales tax system and it requires both a buyer and a seller in collusion to fully escape the consequence of a retail tax. Which of itself increase the risk factors of those liable to collect an remit the tax.
To evade a tax on income such as the Flat Tax, all that is required is the individual or business not report income, no one the wiser, only the perp knows and much easier to get away with it with fewer in on the deal.
Secondly, the flat tax requires a full IRS auditing and assuring that reported income is as stated or reported at all. No gains at all there. The NRST on the other hand is concentrated on one tenth the number of reporting entities and thus provides a more concentrated set of filers on which state tax administrators may focus to assure reasonable compliance levels.
Remember it is the customer that pays the tax in a retail sales tax system and it requires both a buyer and a seller in collusion to fully escape the consequence of a retail tax.No it doesn't. There are many ways to evade the tax. A few of the most likely:
Not the issue, as when that hooker or drug dealer goes out to buy anything in a legitimate business they do indeed pay a retail sales tax, where today they pay no income taxes on their illicit gains at all.So? Today the John or the drug buyer pays income tax on the money he uses for the illegal transaction. Taxes these criminals (there are 2 criminals in a drug buy and a trick) won't be paying. There is no net gain in taxes collected. It's a wash.
A buyer uses a business purchase certificate for an item meant for personal use. Buyer evades tax without collusion of the seller.
Since buyer has applied for and received said certification, he is specifically a known entity subject to audit and verification procedures by state tax administrators, and undertake such transactions at much higher risk than under the income tax system where a non-filer is essentially invisible to the tax authority especially in a population ten times the size of retail sale tax filers and with a witness of the purchase with a certificate in the seller.
Seller collects tax and doesn't remit it. No collusion.
Once again, a licensed business open to audit an verification in a small subset of the current taxpayer population. Again a high risk situatation, with that darned witness to crop up an bite 'm in the rear.
Sorry evasion is a much higher risk endevour under sales taxes than under the current income/payroll tax system.
If you were serious about "letting us keep the money we earn", you'd simply lower the sales tax rate and NOT COLLECT any excess that had to be rebated.
But that's just ONE of the phoney contortions that's embedded in this fraudulent "reform" scam.
Willie, c'mon. You're smarter than that.
It's not cradle to grave welfare. It's an easy way to silence the critics -- not unlike you -- think that the system is regressive. If a family of 4 making $25 grand (roughly) and spends every dime on new goods and services, they pay no tax that isn't covered by the prebate. How is that regressive?
The present system is too screwed up to fix. It must be ripped up by the roots. Starting over again with exemptions and deductions only perpetuates what we have. I don't think that any one can defend this system.
I promoted a flat tax for over 30 years and I thought that it was the best thing since sliced bread. Then when I saw the FairTax, I knew that it was a much better plan. I don't know whether you developed the plan that you gave me the link for or not, but don't allow yourself to be wedded to a plan that doesn't have congressional support and no chance of getting passed when you can spend your time and effort with this plan. Work with us. You'll be glad that you did.
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