Posted on 09/02/2005 11:01:09 AM PDT by pigdog
The bill is already written. There is no room for the lobbyists to help "draft" it, the drafting is over.LOL! Has it gone to mark-up? Has it been voted on?
Shame on you, you know better.
States pay taxes right now, Nightie, in the form of cascading embedded taxes on everything they buy AND in the form of payroll/withholding taxes.
With the FairTax, they'll get the benefit of lowered prices, the payment for administering sales taxes in their state, and the increases in revenue due to improved economic conditions in the state as a whole caused by the FairTax. Actually, they'll be much better off.
There has not been any definitive study that shows otherwise, including the one that you continually hype (which is CERTAINLY not definitive).
You Squirrels are really unbelievable - including your hero WIlliam Gale who has said that the NRST (whatever that might be) sales tax rate would exceed 100% tax exclusive. Perhaps you'd like to derive/defend that nonsense???
Do you have any concerns about the FairTax which are based on facts, rather than speculation?Do you have any facts that aren't speculation or conjecture?
I don't have a lot of time today to post, but I wanted to reply to your concern.
Right now, I keep all these same records in order to reimburse my employees for their out of pocket expenses, as well as to ensure that these expenses are for business use. That will not change under FairTax. Right now at the end of the year I add up all the expenses in various categories and enter these expenses as line items on my corporate tax form. The government is not involved in evaluating each meal, hotel bill, plane ticket, etc and does not have a record of these individual items. For small purchases (I think it is under $75 but I document everything) there is not even a requirement now for a written receipt.
Under NRST, I will be sending a complete listing of every single solitary item purchased by anyone in my business. This will be a huge listing, don't think Wal-Mart, think sales organizations. Is someone at the HappyTax Compliance Center going to review these items?
Whatever they do with them, they will have every single solitary bit of information about a companies expenses, right now they don't have any of this.
And they are collecting a tax that you don't even owe them, and then asking you to fill out a form to return your money back to you. SOunds like withholding, except it is worse because they are withholding taxes that the business is exempt from.
I just think the picture of getting rid of the IRS is another big misrepresentation, as it pertains to business. And since FairTaxers are counting on business saving a lot of compliance costs I don't see that either.
We also don't know the exact difference between the new take-home pay and the new consumer price level. If there is an inflationary shock, that is bad, but not nearly as bad as the inflationary shock one is faced with when the AMT kicks in or taxes and penalties come due all at once. Besides, we have dealt with inflationary shocks before.
Have you heard back from anyone?
I imagine a specific price decrease is not mentioned because there are differences of opinion on how much it might be so that's not too surprising.
Getting 100% of your pay and having prices drop are certainly not "mutually exclusive" by the 75 economists or even by Jorgenson. But it's very reassuring to know that you KNOW what the 75 would or would not have stated and what they knew that was not in the statement. They didn't predict Hurricane Katrina in the letter, either - does that mean it didn't happen?
It's also encouraging to know that you're smarter than the 75 economists about compliance costs and their effects. Keep up the good work - you'll soon be running for Senator.
And that has nothing to do with the price of tea in china. The undeniable fact is, one day after the fair tax goes into effect, government payrolls including teachers goes up 22.22% and that is taking into account current FICA taxes they now pay. Do local school districts have to cut 1/5th of their teachers? Yes.
Good to see you finally exhibit a sense of humor, Rongie, after all these many years of bitching about FairTax "lies", etc.
I would think you'd realize how funny this post actually is since it collects and embeds so many of your past "malstatements" of logic and economics. Keep up the good work and it'll only get funnier as time goes on and you get more strident.
Really, Senator Rongie ... you decree that states have to cut 1/5 of their teachers??? Very interesting, but not very likely (or sensible) since the states will no doubt do the reasonable thing and conform their sales taxes to the FairTax, lower the state rate, and see their revenues rise.
So lie about what I said. I said Getting 100% of your paycheck and having prices drop 22% is mutually exclusive. If you are going to quote me, do it correctly. Pre-tax prices will fall due to savings in corporate taxes, their share of payroll taxes and some compliance costs savings. So saying some savings is OK, but there is absolutely no support that these savings are anywhere near 22%. Getting a 10% drop would be an extremely optimistic estimation. To continue to say prices will drop 22% is a total misrepresentation of the facts.
Payrolls go up 22.22%, undeniably true. Revenues are neutral under fair tax, that is your claim, so you can't argue that. Where does the extra money to pay this 22.22% increase come from? More pixie dust from our fairy taxers.
So the fairy tax is all about collecting more taxes for governments to spend. Thank you for you honesty!
He is strange. You just state a fact about their 29.87% rate, then he accuses you of quoting William Gale's assertion about a 100% tax rate. I wish these debates were about opinions and studies, but we can't even get the fairy taxers to agree to simple facts.
Dear phil_will1,
"As an opponent of the FairTax (and an apologist for the current system), you want to see the most political roadblocks put in the path of the FairTax that can be constructed."
No, first, what you're suggesting as a device to prevent the NRST is an underhanded action. Thus, yes, you impute evil motives to me, as you suggest that I would do evil to defeat the NRST.
It's interesting that you don't recognize that you suggested that I'd be willing to commit an underhanded act to defeat the NRST. Perhaps you don't view it as underhanded? That would say a lot.
Second, you impute other motives that don't exist.
I'm not an apologist for the current system. But neither am I a proponent of the NRST in the current environment.
I don't believe it actually attacks the real problems we face regarding funding the federal government. I believe it's a distraction from the real problems.
As to "transition rules," well, as simple as they may be in principle, in my discussions with NRSTers, I found that they could not explain to me how they would work in practice in every case that I presented.
The income tax is pretty simple in principle, too. You have income, you pay taxes. The details are what's tricky.
sitetest
You think that by changing the location of the tax collection tollbooth that these fellows are going to stop manipulating the system.
There is a world of difference between taxing consumption instead of income. It is not just relocating the collection point. Karl Marx recommended the income tax as the best way to bring down Capitalism. Alan Keyes said:
By Alan Keyes © 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
Last week I discussed the importance of abolishing the income tax because of its tendency to form a habit of servility in the souls of a people that accepts it. Servility of soul is bad not only in itself, it is also an open door through which will soon walk the abuses of ambitious government power. Leaders who find themselves with governmental power over a servile people will be quick to conclude that such a people exist to serve them. And in the 20th century we have seen the horrors to which such conclusions tend.
President Clinton is a kind of prophetic precursor of the kind of leader we can expect increasingly to see -- naturally and easily presuming that the entire people he leads is merely an instrument of his own ego. This trend has been going on throughout the course of the 20th century, and is now coming to a head in the explicit precedents set by Clinton of the usurpation and abuse of power. The leaders of tomorrow's America are watching now to see just how much this people will put up with, and they are forming their ambitions accordingly.
If we pay any attention at all to the current fake debate on tax cuts, it should be with this overall ambition of our governing class in mind. It is bad enough that Republicans expect us to be overjoyed at a tax cut that is less than half of the Reagan era tax cuts, and that is stretched out over 10 years. The tax cuts they are offering us are less than one third of what we are predicted to pay in "extra" taxes over that period. It is like overpaying for a car by $3 thousand, and being happy to get a check back for $8 hundred.
Yet what is worse is that even this minimal tax cut is being opposed in the Congress explicitly as a waste of federal dollars! But keeping more of our own money can be a waste of federal dollars only on the assumption that all of the money belongs to the federal government, and that politicians are doing us a favor when they let us keep a bit of it. This is exactly how they talk -- and I don't just mean Democrats. All the politicians in the country speak of it as a great favor when they let us keep a little more of what we have earned, and expect us to go down on our knees in gratitude and vote them back into office.
I believe that the reason our ruling class in Washington talks about all income as the property of government is that since the passage of the 16th Amendment, it really is. We made a major mistake at the beginning of this century, and as a result of that mistake we turned over to the government control, in principle, every last penny that anybody in this country makes or earns.
If I agree to turn over to someone a certain percentage of my income and also agree that the same person gets to set the percentage -- how much of my money does that person control? The answer, of course, is that he controls all of it. Anything he lets me keep based on an arrangement like that is simply a favor. Once I've made the agreement I have ceded to him the right to take whatever percent of my money he wants. The income tax is a system under which we have ceded to the government a pre-emptive claim to a certain percentage of our income, and the government sets the percentage. In principle, the government controls all of our money. That is why those in power talk as if they control all of our money -- they do.
The limitless extent of control the income tax gives to government was understood and recognized by some people even when the income tax was being instituted, and they fought it tooth and nail. Some of them pointed to the fact that, in the 19th century, Marx and Engels had written about the income tax for this very reason. One of the major elements of the communist agenda was taking over the people's money by means of the income tax, precisely because of the unlimited nature of the control it offered. So as we have been fighting communism throughout the 20th century, we had already put in place at the beginning of the century one of most important elements of communism, and we suffer under it right now.
The income tax, and the Federal Reserve system that arrived along with it, are instruments of the increased centralization of money and control over our economy, with all the bad effects that result from such control. As our political class becomes more ambitious, unscrupulous and dangerous, the entrenched centralization of our economic system remains an ever-present opportunity for them to extend further control over our lives.
The debate goes on about farm policy, for example. Every few years we have a new cycle of it, while we lose more and more of our farm families. Every politician under the sun, of course, stands up to say that we must "save the family farm." And yet every time a bill is passed to save the family farm, we lose more family farms.
The root reality that must be faced by those struggling to protect the family farm in America is that we cannot sustain a system of family farms in an economy with a centralized financial structure. This was the basis of the debate in the 19th century between supporters and opponents of a national bank. Opponents understood that the survival of grass roots institutions, including the preservation of businesses and farms in the hands of people in their communities, required banks that were citizens of those communities. Banks answering to higher powers, including centralized authority, and using the resources flowing through them to beef up the bottom line of institutions that don't answer to local citizens and aren't part of the local community will let local institutions go under when the times get tough. In such institutions, the family farm is struggling against a financial structure that is incompatible with its existence and survival.
Survival of the family farm won't be secure until we have changed the fundamental structure of finance and lending that services family farming. We must get control of local economic resources back in the hands of people in responsive local institutions that will care about what happens to the people who live in the local community. And what is true of the family farm is true as well of all forms of real local community and corporate life. We simply cannot expect that local and private institutions will flourish, and remain free, if we do not take ongoing and fundamental care to shift the balance of power and control back to them. If we permit economic power to remain centralized, this instrument of manipulation will be increasingly attractive to ambitious men, and used to bring us further under their control. Our founders understood that economic sovereignty was a pillar of defense against a political class eager to abuse its people. They were fond of quoting Blackstone, who said that "A power over a man's resources is a power over his will."
With the presidency of Bill Clinton we have entered an era of politicians who openly view government power as a means to personal gratification. The habits of shame and respect for the rule of law will not restrain our presidents, at least until the disgraceful Clinton precedents are reversed, and the Senate's pusillanimous acquittal of Clinton shows that the people's representatives cannot be relied upon either. The break-up of centralized governmental authority over our economic lives, and above all the elimination of the income tax, has never been a more pressing moral and political imperative. We must reclaim our economic sovereignty, so we can limit the damage our increasingly corrupt political class can inflict on our property, our wills, and our character.
You and Alan seem to agree on everything but the income tax. That seems inconsistent to me.
I am nearly as cynical as you about politicians but I do think there are some who are there for the common good rather than for self-aggrandizement. Just as you said evil intent has nevertheless developed a workable system, that is just the way politics works you said, why do you oppose a better tax system even if you think the intent is evil and will be manipulated?
Since it is a tax on consumption consider that you are buying government services and can, therefore, see how much it costs and what you are getting for your money.
Government can't make people good. In fact, it provides cover for the bad. No better cover is provided that the maze that is our current tax system. The NRST will clean it up and make it transparent. It will be up to us to keep it that way.
Oops! I should have but got a little hasty there.
On second thought, since the house and senate bills are identical there will be no need for committee reconciliation. Those who are for it and will vote for it are for it as it is. Either it will pass or it won't.
Wow, Sitetest believes in reparations for blacks by exempting them from income tax for several gernerations? I did not know....
Dear Your Nightmare,
"You don't think the states paying 29.87% on all their purchases and the wages of their employees would be hundreds of billions of dollars?"
Well, it's easy enough to demonstrate.
Conservatively, state and local taxes take about 13% of GDP. What's GDP? About $12 trillion? A bit more?
Okay. That comes to about $1.6 trillion spent by all states and local jurisdictions.
30% of $1.6 trillion is actually a bit closer to $500 billion than the $350 or so billion you've been quoting.
However, the initial estimate of state and local spending is a rough approximation, and there will be things that the localities spend money on (like part of the interest on long-term bonds) that won't be taxed.
Your $350 billion or so number looks pretty good, if perhaps a little conservative.
sitetest
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