Free Republic

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. is out with his new book, On the Brink, where he details his version of events that occurred on Wall Street and Washington D.C.during the financial crisis while he was Treasury Secretary. All that you really need to know about this fairy tale can be found in the front of the book in what is labeled as "Author's Notes". In this preface, Paulson tells us that he doesn't take notes and doesn't use email and his staff was frustrated because he didn't send out memos, but fortunately, he tells us, he has a very...

Make no mistake here. Cruz is proposing a VAT add-on to the existing personal income tax system.

Cruz addresses a major reason for our trade deficit. However ... If something confuses people? It invites corruption. A handy rule of thumb in government. Are VATs confusing? Very. ~~~ Even explaining a VAT* is tough because there are many different kinds. Some alleged VATs aren't even VATs according to many. But I'll break it down into two categories: 1. A good VAT. 2. A bad VAT. ~~~ A Good VAT Senator Cruz proposes 'turning the tables' on Europe and other nations which are sneaking money back to corporations which give them jobs. In the nutshell, a good 'VAT' is...

Two Republican presidential candidates -- Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rand Paul, R-Ky. -- have proposed replacing much of the federal tax system with a VAT. Cruz's proposed VAT would have a 16 percent tax-inclusive rate, and Paul's proposed VAT would have a 14.5 percent tax-inclusive rate. Both VATs would be administered through the subtraction method rather than the credit invoice method used by most countries with VATs. ... The biggest problem with the Cruz and Paul plans is their pronounced lack of tax transparency. The senators have consistently described their proposed levies as business taxes rather than VATs and...

Tax reform is a key part of reviving our economy so that the 21st century is another American century. That's why Senator Marco Rubio put together a tax reform plan that would generate economic growth, an employment boom, and rising wages for American workers. The Rubio tax plan would make the economy grow twice as fast as it has this century because it would lower taxes on hard-working families, allowing them to take home more of what they earn so they can use it to provide a better future for their children. It would reduce taxes on saving and investment,...

As I understand it, a VAT tax is very different than a national sales tax because it taxes every level of production and distribution. That gives imported products a grossly unfair advantage. ~~~ For example -- the price of a screw. First the ore value is taxed. Then the smelted steel value is taxed. Then the steel distributer is taxed. Then after the screw is made, the value of the screw is screwed again. Then the screw wholesale value is screwed. Then the retail value is screwed again -- the only visible aspect of the tax. The rest of the...

Most other developed nations already have a VAT -- a system in which taxes are paid by each business in the different stages of production of a good or service, and, ultimately, directly or indirectly, by the consumer. VAT is considered a consumption tax, since it taxes what people consume, rather than how much they earn or their profits from investment. That's also a reason why some consider it unfair for lower-income households. And critics say it could let government take a bigger slice of the overall economic pie, enabling higher spending. Its supporters, meanwhile, say VAT is better for...

Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are strong advocates of limited government. They are gifted spokesmen for free markets, and they are heroes for taking on the GOP establishment on issues such as overspending and civil liberties. That is why their embrace of the value-added tax (VAT) in their presidential campaigns is so baffling. VATs are the revenue engine of big-government welfare states, not a proper funding source for the small federal government that both senators favor for America. Cruz and Paul propose to rip up the current tax code and replace it with individual income taxes at low, flat...

Law of Unintended Consequences: New EU Tax Laws Force Thousands of Businesses to Close in Just Six Months { Full title ]. New European Union tax rules introduced in January have already driven thousands of small companies out of business, with thousands more set to follow as awareness of the change in the VAT law grows. Research has shown that incompetence on the part of collecting agencies has further added misery to the situation. After an eight-year consultation which excluded the voices of micro-businesses, the EU introduced new rules on VAT returns at the beginning of this year, which required...

The US Senate on Monday passed a bill aimed at ending tax-free shopping on the internet but the move looks set to face fierce opposition before it becomes law. The Marketplace Fairness Act, which has cross-party supporter and the backing of powerful retailers, would give states the power to require retailers with sales over $1m to collect state and local sales taxes for online purchases.

As Ben Domenech notes in his Transom, Mitt Romney’s advisors have now advised him to support “a $2 gas tax, a VAT, and open Taliban talks.” Add to that list not repealing Obamacare. Norm Coleman, an advisor to Romney, went on record saying We’re not going to do repeal. You’re not going to repeal Obamacare… It’s not a total repeal… You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president… You can’t whole-cloth throw it out.

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed,"___ Herman Cain Of course Herman Cain, former ringleader of the Federal Reserve would say something like that, especially when the Federal Reserve and its un-constitutional money monopoly is in defiance of our founding fathers expressed intentions, and is used to plunder what America‘s Businesses and labor have produced. And what did Daniel Webster have to say regarding working people: "Of all the contrivances for...

In a previous entry in support of Mitch Daniels, there was considerable blow back and one critcism was his alleged support of a value added tax (VAT). The single mention of the VAT as concerns Daniels is in a speech he gave at the Hudson Institute in October, 2010 while receiving the Herman Kahn Award. Herman Kahn, for those unaware, was a founder of the Hudson Institute after leaving the RAND Institute, both of which are conservative think tanks. Kahn had written a book called The Coming Boomin which he noted that a tax on oil imports would be a...

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels appeared with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday in August to discuss what government should or should not do to improve the economy.

Confirming once again that the clueless government would rather risk a populist backlash than actually cutting costs (recall that federal worker compensation has surged in the past 5 years), it appears that the long-stirring debate over a value added tax may be about to materialize into something tangible. Per Bloomberg, "Alice Rivlin, a member of President Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction commission (and former Fed vice chairwoman), is trying to stir a debate over imposing a national sales tax to reduce the deficit. Rivlin, as part of a separate 19-member group sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, offered a plan...

Democrats in Washington are struggling to find a solution to the huge deficits created by the Obama Administration spending spree. The Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform recently had its first meeting, and they are widely expected – after the November election, of course – to recommend a national VAT tax as the best way to solve the revenue crisis. The problem is that we have a VAT already. For those not familiar with the term, a Value Added Tax (VAT) taxes the estimated market value added to a product at each stage of manufacturing or distribution. It’s similar to...

Bill Clinton: More immigrants and value-added tax will reduce deficit By Eric Zimmermann - 05/14/10 11:53 AM ET The U.S. needs more immigrants and a value-added tax to help reduce the deficit, former President Bill Clinton said Friday. Clinton said the country was "mortgaging out a lot of our sovereignty" by using foreign creditors to pay for an "exploding" debt. His recipe? More growth and revenue, fueled by immigrant workers and a controversial value-added tax. "I think we're going to have to have more taxpayers, which is why I favor, in a disciplined way, immigration reform and letting more immigrants...

White House adviser and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker floated the idea of introducing a Value Added Tax (VAT) as part of an overhaul of the U.S. tax system in early April. Since then there has been significantly more buzz about the idea. But both sides so far have been missing the largest issue: that a VAT is not just any old tax, it is a plague of potentially epic proportions that promises to further expand the size and scope of the federal government and prop open the spending floodgates for good.

Taxes: Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is about as liberal as they come. Yet even he gets the obvious truth of a VAT: When added to other taxes, it would fall hardest on the poor. Clinton's labor guy is now comfortably ensconced as a professor at Berkeley. The nine books he has written have basically helped delineate liberal thinking since the late 1970s. Yet while many in his party, the Democrats, now yearn for a value-added tax (in addition to our current income tax) as a way to raise money to pay down the estimated $12 trillion in deficits over...

The nation’s fiscal path is “unsustainable,” and the problem “cannot be solved through minor tinkering,” the head of the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday morning. Doug Elmendorf, best known for arbitrating the costs of various health care proposals, added his voice to a growing chorus of economic experts who predict dire consequences if political leaders don’t scale back spending, increase taxes or both — and soon. Elmendorf noted a recent CBO report that pegged an increase in the public debt from $7.5 trillion at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion at the end of 2020 if President Barack Obama’s...