Because in FT world, everything is a brand new item sold by a federally licensed retailer.
Posted on 01/27/2008 5:39:52 AM PST by xcamel
Mike Huckabee’s radical plan for sales tax revenue system only looks seductive, argues Tim Worstall, who demonstrates how the Fair Tax can be easily gamed and how the end of the I.R.S. is really the beginning of an even greater bureaucracy of retail auditors.
by Tim Worstall
As a Brit, I’ve been watching the back and forth about Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s Fair Tax with amazement. The idea is that the entire current Federal tax system is abolished replaced it with a 23% sales tax upon everything, this meaning we don’t the IRS and individual tax returns. The money is collected by the States and handed on so that there simply isn’t a Federal tax collection system at all.
As one who has run businesses under a variety of different tax systems, I see the crucial issue as one of compliance. How are you going to actually make people pay this 23% sales tax? Or more precisely, make sure that they don’t change their behavior so that they don’t pay it?
There is great support amongst economists for consumption taxes. We’ve got to tax something and we don’t want to tax the “good things” unnecessarily. Thus taxing work isn’t something we really want to do, nor is taxing savings. If we only tax that portion of their money that people actually spend then that’s a consumption tax. The way this is usually proposed is that we have something very like the IRS which we report to each year. We tell them our income, deduct what we’ve saved and then pay tax on the remainder: what we’ve spent, or our consumption. We also regard taking money out of savings as income that we have consumed. Think of it as having a giant IRA which holds all of your savings.
Now there are other forms of consumption tax possible but this is the type that the roster of economists the Fair Tax promoters quote in support usually mean. Of the other types of consumption tax we also have Value Added Tax (VAT) and a sales tax, the Fair Tax being one of those latter.
A VAT taxes the value added along the manufacturing chain: the miner pays it on his inputs, collects it on his ore, the smelter pays it to the miner and collects it when he sells the copper to the wire maker. The wire maker collects it when he sells to the computer manufacturer and so on all the way down the line to you, the final consumer, who pays it to the retailer but cannot collect it from anyone else.
Some argue that the Fair Tax is exactly the same as this: the amount paid by the final consumer is the same, all we have done is eliminated the taxation of the business to business transactions along the way. Quite so, and if the tax rate was 5%, or 10% even, this wouldn’t matter very much: indeed the straight sales tax method might even be more efficient.
But we’re not talking about a tax leveled at that rate: we’re talking about one at 23% (at a minimum). Even with a VAT as economist Bruce Bartlett points out, we start to see leakages at those sorts of rates. With a single point of sale tax we’ll see huge tax evasion. For what a VAT does is make each supplier down the chain keen to make sure that he gets the legal invoices showing that he’s paid VAT to his suppliers so that he can offset it against the VAT he collects from his customers, before he sends his check off to Mr. Taxman. The system becomes in a large manner (although you still conduct audits to go and look at a certain percentage of these invoices) self-policing. The Fair Tax does away with that entire process, making it much easier to evade.
Just as an example, here’s how under the Fair Tax, if you were criminally minded, you could make a great deal of money very quickly. Assume that we’re using the current sales tax process to collect it (as is assumed in the plan). You set up shop to sell electronic gewgaws. You’re using a stolen or faked social security number and identification so you have no credit record. When you set up the local sales tax administrators will ask you what your turnover is going to be like. You tell them and they then ask for a deposit against your first few months sales tax collected. Knowing how this system works you low-ball your likely takings and hand over, say, $15,000. Great, you now have a license to sell, you’ve got a short term lease on a shop (or more practically, a website) and you sell calculators, alarm clocks or something for a few days.
Now the trick is to move into something of much higher value: no one is going to be monitoring your business at this point (imagine the enforcement regime needed to monitor every website in the country!) and you go off and buy a couple of truck loads of high-end laptops, or plasma screens perhaps. Yes, you’ve got to invest to make money! Now you’re competing against WalMart, Staples, other big box retailers, but you’ve got a secret weapon. Each truck has 1,500 units on it (say), each unit has a (discounted) retail price of $2,000 before the Fair Tax (imagine). Everyone else is selling at $2,460 therefore, making perhaps $50 a box. But, clever scofflaw that you are, you’re going to sell them at $2,200, a more than 10% discount to everyone else. If you’ve got brand name equipment, with things like warranty being handled by the manufacturer, you’ll have no problems in selling out of your stock in a short period of time. You collect the money, skip on paying the Fair Tax and you’ve got $600,000 profit. Sure, you’ve left $15,000 as the surety and you’ve got to go buy some new fake ID, but you can be back in business again in a few weeks somewhere else.
There’s really only three ways to stop activity like this. The first is to make the sales tax itself so low that the temptation to do this just isn’t there. As we’re trying to fund the entire Federal Government here we can’t do that. The second is to make it a VAT (and for reasons I don’t understand, the Fair Tax folks don’t want to do that) which again reduces the incentive to do this: you’ve paid your supplier the VAT on the value of his sale to you so the amount you can steal is again drastically reduced, making it not worth the candle.
The third is what Laurence Kotlikoff, a Fair Tax defender, seems to propose: First, the vast majority of retail sales occur in major retail outlets, like WalMart. Second, we’ll have vastly fewer taxpaying entities (14 million rather than more than 100 million) on which to focus our enforcement efforts. Third, we’ll have hundreds of thousands of otherwise unemployed IRS agents, accountants, and tax attorneys to enlist to enforce a single tax. Fourth, we can always compel firms to report, via 1099-type forms, their sales to other firms. This will provide the same records that arise under a VAT. Fifth, the government can stipulate that all retail sellers provide buyers with a written receipt, regardless of whether the transaction is or is not in cash, specifying that the FairTax has been paid.
One and two fail because while we may have that structure of retail sales now we most certainly won’t have that structure if we change the tax system so radically. Unless every roadside watermelon stand has to register we’ve just given them a 23% price advantage against the supermarkets: unless every farmers’ market stall does ditto. This might be a nice way to encourage more local commerce but isn’t what the plan’s promoters are really looking for. We’ll have an explosion of small scale sellers trying to work under the radar of the system. One, two and five fail because we are talking about the criminal possibilities of cheating the system. If we’re going to do four why not actually make it a VAT, so as to get not just the form filling but the economic incentives aligned as well?
But the most laughable suggestion is the third. I’ve always been under the impression that the aim here is to abolish the IRS. So what we’re in fact going to do is abolish the IRS and then hire everyone back again as the FTS (Fair Tax Service)? And the FTS will have to be vastly more intrusive than the IRS ever has been: to beat my hypothetical retailing scam they would need to a) monitor every retail outlet and b) every wholesale order by such outlets. We’re not going to get rid of intrusive taxmen this way, we’re going to be drowning in them.
The final defense of the Fair Tax on the compliance issue is given by Kotlikoff again: The Fair Tax is, I should add, equivalent to a VAT except for excluding taxation of business-to-business sales, which yields, under the VAT, no net revenue. Virtually every developed country with the exception of the U.S. has a VAT. Since the Fair Tax is a VAT, except for its treatment of businesses transactions and its inclusion of a rebate, no one should view the FairTax with alarm. Collecting revenues by taxing retail sales is a tried and true practice.
A VAT is indeed a tried and true system of taxing retail sales. The things that make a VAT different, the taxation of business-to-business sales, are what make them work as they do. So, yes, the Fair Tax is indeed the same as a VAT except for those things which make VATs work.
Somehow, the argument that it’s exactly the same but we’ve taken out the bit that stops people from evading it isn’t all that strong, to my mind at least, an argument in favour of this particular tax change.
So whats your point? The straw men arguments this writer presents could also be applied to current income tax evasion tactics with bogus SSN’s and such... WalMart and Sears know what an item costs and I believe that big retailers will be looking out for and reporting cheats, to that end a simple reward system for information would work wonders...
Someone needs to convert that into a bumper sticker.
Thank you.....
There should be a separate thread for ‘strawmen’ articles like this....all of which are a waste of readers time searching for ‘facts’....or at least a ‘strawman indicator’!
Getting hung up on the details about Huckabee’s Fair Tax proposals is like worrying about whether Santa’s sleigh is compliant with FAA flight regulations. They are both fantasies. The details do not matter.
Like worrying if the bridge the troll is under has been inspected by the DOT..
Loved you in Animal House.
This drivel might make whit’s worth of difference in the broader discussion if one assumes there is no one working feverishly to scan the present system.
ANY system can be gamed, and that applies to Income Taxes, VAT’s, the Fair Tax, even the Flat Tax model.
The author being concerned about people reducing their level of consumption brought a chortle, too. OF COURSE People will be able to NOT spend. An added benefit of the Fair Tax, IMO.
so both systems are bad.
The goal is to go to a better system not a HIGHER, MORE INTRUSIVE system.
The author does not even go into all the legal means of avoidance. Out of the USA buying will skyrocket.
Yes, but.
I don't see how, under the current system, so much money can be made so quickly with so little risk as the example that was cited in the article.
By the time the authorities catch on (if they ever do), the seller is long gone. It's actually safer than selling drugs and the penalty, IF caught, would be significantly less.
Did the Little Red Hen filed her OSHA Annual Report on time?
scan = scam
I just washed my hands and can’t do a thing with my fingers...
After signing 22 of them, that’s really kind of funny...
So you’re saying the FT isn’t any better than the current system at deterring evaders? That’s a strange argument for a FT supporter to make.
Amd wide-scale non-spending would produce not only a serious recession, but a large reduction in guvmint funding.
The later would in turn cause Congress to increase the FT rate, thus deepening the recession.
And if the FT Police turn a bit of a blind eye to most of the black market sales, the guvmint shortfall would still lead to increasing the FT rate, resulting in even more black market sales.
Either way, the FT would be a disaster of epic proportions.
No change in evasion
Heavily re-taxes retirement money
Doesn't reduce spending
Creates a new retail tax audit bureaucracy
Allows the IRS to "live on"
Doesn't deal with SS/MC/MA
Creates a massive new entitlement program
Amd many, many more problems yet unforeseen...
It actually creates TWO new federal bureaus, not just one.
Actually it should read that Huckabee supports the Fair Tax. Its not his or his idea. Im not supporting Huckabee or the Fair Tax in any way, I’m just tired of so much misinformation these days. www.fairtax.org
NewIRS vs IRSclassic
Depends on how you look at it.
If you don’t pay your income taxes, the government will show up at your door with guns.
If you opt to not purchase any “fair-taxable” items, they don’t do anything.
I look at it as someone who dutifully pays his taxes (while happily exercising every legal taxable deduction).
Stopped reading right there! Bruce Bartlett is a lying establishment weasel heavily invested in the "progressive income tax system!
Why the Fair Tax Will Work by Laurence J. Kotlikoff
I wish we would quit wasting time with it.It's a fun pastime.
Now in new revenue neutral flavors!
And increase evasion. Viscious cycle.
Non-responsive to the question. The question concerned deterrence of evaders, not non-spenders. Get back on topic if you want to respond.
Just noting that FT’s do not defend their “plan” with facts, but attack, attack, attack.
(and spam the thread with propaganda links)
Precisely.
The national retail sales tax movement was started (or rather, restarted) by the ‘Church’ of Scientology as an attempt to de-power the IRS. Though the ‘Church’ of Scientology is no longer at the forefront, many FT supporters still hold that as the most important goal, and if it is accomplished, they will be happy.
They don’t really think beyond their noses, which is why many of them move quickly from a cursory defense to a blistering, and often personal, offense.
Fair Tax ping!
Fair Tax, you saved for retirement, we'll take it!
Or “What we taxed, we’ll tax again...and again...and again...”
Why do they still ping pigdog?
Bruce Bartlett is a lying establishment weasel heavily invested in the "progressive income tax system!Paid for by AFFT...Why the Fair Tax Will Work by Laurence J. Kotlikoff
Hypocrite.
No idea.. Thought he was “off the payroll”
Oops.
This is the same as the simple minded that want to raise taxes on Corporations. All the corporations, or the rich for that matter, will pass the tax on the consumer and we have done nothing more than raise taxes on the poor and middle class.
I only pointed out the obvious, that which causes such an extreme level of denial in their camp..
Yeah, right. The Fair Tax is MUCH more intrusive than disclosing:
1. Your employer
2. Your salary
3. Your broker
4. Your banker/mortgage holder
5. Your House of Worship and the amount contributed
6. The stocks/bonds/investements you sold
7. The stocks/bonds/investments you bought
8. The sale of real property
9. Earnings/losses from businesses
10. Earnings/capital gains or losses from stocks/bonds/investments
11. Amount of Tuition paid for a dependent
12. Tax-advantaged retirement savings
13. Distributions (mandatory or voluntary) from tax-advantaged retirement savings
14. Alimony received or paid.
15. The amount of mortgage interest paid.
16. The amount of interest earned from your bank
17. Aggregate medical expenses
18. Taxes paid to state and local governments.
19. Investment expenses
20. Rental or Farm income
21. Unemployment compensation
22. Social Security received
23. Need I go on?
The Internal Revenue Code is the most intrusive, privacy destroying, 4th Amendment eviscerating tool ever designed. We are not free people. We are slaves to the government.
Please see statement from former IRS Commissioner, T. Coleman Andrews: http://famguardian.org/Subjects/Taxes/Articles/TColemanAndrews.htm
Or...the American people can hold their feet to the fire, and demand spending reform and a return to Constitutional mandates.
I will continue to maintain that TAX reform without SPENDING reform is a fool’s endeavor.
Will it be painful? Yep.
Will it be quick? Nope.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t be done. Any system will invite some folks to work it, to game it, to defraud it. That’s happening today, of course.
I don’t agree with everything in the FT, like the prebate, but it does give us an opportunity to revamp the funding process of government and reclaim some control from the Congress critters. IF we, as a nation, subsequently allow the process to be manipulated by the fools of the Potomac, then we will get the government we deserve. It’s up to us.
The Fair Tax is one of only two responsible proposals to replace the current model. And, it’s the only one that taxes consumption rather than income. In my humble opinion, that makes it the right one.
And...this ain’t the Huckster’s plan...it’s been around for several years, without his name anywhere near it.
FT == chose not to spend
IT == chose not to earn
and not a dimes worth of difference.
Will all that unspendable cash “taste like chicken”?
We already have that system, it called excise taxes. These taxes are levied on many items. Sporting goods have an 11% excise tax already built in and you never notice it. The list of excise taxes is long and includes just about everything you might think of. It would be the same with the fair tax. The government is unable nad unwilling to give up strangle hold it has on the american people with it’s “voluntary” tax. THe government is first to steal from you in your paycheck, and then steal more with regulations and special assessments.
The only people against the fair tax are those who manipulate or cheat the current code to their extreme benefit.
FT is a retail sales tax, not an excise tax. Excise taxes have existed since the days of our Founding Father's. America didn't have any retail sales until after the birth of Karl Marx.
The only people for the fair tax are those who live on welfare and want an additional "prebate" entitlement check.
Because in FT world, everything is a brand new item sold by a federally licensed retailer.
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