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To: kevkrom
The concept is that the necessities should not be subject to tax.

Then don't tax them. Period. Sure some people will eat lobster and others tunafish casserole. Big deal, unless classenvy is part of the problem.

Don't tax their house, either. (You'll collect on the furniture in the big houses, more than you can cram into a smaller one).

Do away with the prebate (and the army of workers to administer it), and taxes on food, primary housing, the energy to heat that housing, and medical care.

Period.

If someone wants a boob job, so what?

You just save them the trouble of going to a therapist who will say they 'need' it.

112 posted on 12/15/2014 1:59:46 PM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: Smokin' Joe
Then don't tax them. Period.

The other problem with exempting certain items is that you now open the door for everyone to start lobbying why their specific product or service should be tax-exempt, and you get a complex mess of a tax code, one of the things NRST proponents try to avoid. Plus, the more items you exempt, the higher the tax rate has to be on everything else if you're gunning for revenue-neutral. (Up to Laffer Curve limits, at which point it might not even be possible to get the revenue targets.) And, of course, the higher the rate, the more lobbying to get products exempted and the higher the tax evasion rate.

Personally, I'd simply ditch the whole "prebate" idea while not exempting anything. Prices should be roughly neutral post-NRST implementation, as it's simply replacing taxes collected one means with a different means. The prebate is included mostly as a political ploy to avoid charges of regressive taxation and as a parallel replacement of the personal exemption/standard deduction of the current code. I understand the thinking behind it, but it's be a better system if it wasn't politically necessary.

147 posted on 12/16/2014 5:10:22 AM PST by kevkrom (I'm not an unreasonable man... well, actually, I am. But hear me out anyway.)
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