Posted on 07/20/2005 12:51:23 PM PDT by Your Nightmare
Members of President Bush's advisory panel on tax reform largely agree that the individual alternative minimum tax, or AMT, should be fully repealed the committee's chairman said Wednesday.
"I think the obvious consensus was on the AMT on the individual side. We didn't end up with a consensus on the corporate side, even though I think it's fair to say that I think all panel members felt the corporate AMT was really not an effective way to tax," Chairman Connie Mack, a former Republican senator from Florida, told reporters after a public meeting of the committee.
The AMT is a parallel tax system created in 1969; it was enacted after it was revealed that a handful of extremely wealthy Americans paid no income tax. But thresholds for the AMT were never indexed for inflation. As a result, it has encompassed or threatened a growing number of middle-income taxpayers over the years. Lawmakers and administrations have responded by temporarily pushing up the threshold, but have yet to come up with a complete fix.
It's also become a substantial revenue source. Full repeal would reduce revenues by more than a trillion dollars over 10 years.
During the panel discussion, committee member Bill Frenzel said he agreed that it was time to "bite the bullet" and press for full repeal, but warned that doing so will put a "huge burden" on the panel to find a way to make up the lost revenues.
The panel's vice chairman, former Democratic Sen. John Breaux, said that while he's not a fan of the AMT, the panel must examine whether the full repeal of the system would allow some of the nation's highest earners to get away with paying no tax at all.
Mack replied that if that were the case, the committee would have to make adjustments in order to maintain roughly the same tax burden on the upper quintile of earners that is now in place.
The panel members agreed that changes to the corporate AMT would best be tackled as part of a broad corporate tax reform, Mack noted.
The committee, formally known as the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, must present the Treasury Department with a set of tax-reform proposals in September.
Bush has set a number of ground rules for the panel, however. The proposals must be revenue-neutral. Also, future tax measures can't touch the code's most sacred cows -- mortgage interest deduction and charitable giving.
Interrrrestinnnng! You don't know what the AFFT used, then how do you know the Panel Staff used the same thing???I don't know that the Panel used the same thing as the AFT, I only know the Panel used the base of the FairTax.
$10B is trivial??? Hmm - shows your SQL mindset - that's for sure.Compared to $2 trillion, $10 billion is trivial.
And with the FairTax, the paying for the businesses and the states collecting the sales tax comes out of the tax revenues,Yeah, just like the IRS budget. What's your point, or do you even have one?
Hey...here's an idea....
CUT SPENDING!
The sale is not taxed under either IT or FairTax. Under the FairTax when spent by the drug dealer, the tax revenue gained is $23. Under the IT, the ONLY revenue gained (if any) would be at most the profit on the thing sold to the drug dealer ... let's say the seller has a good margin of 25% on sales or $25 on the drug dealer's $100. Of this $25, only a small portion would ever possibly end up as tax revenue since the tax on the $25 profit would likely be something like the 15% rate - or $25 x 0.15 = $3.75. This falls far short of the $23 tax "contribution" under the FairTax so the "it's a wash" arguments are nonsense no matter who makes them."Um, the income the drug buyer is using to buy the drugs with is taxed. He had to make ~$125 dollar to buy $100 worth of drugs. The government got the other $25.
Currently, business has to increase it's prices to pay for the expense of collecting and remitting taxes (among other costs associated with the income tax). That is part of the invisible tax forced on consumers via prices.
Why do you want taxes to be hidden?
Currently, business has to increase it's prices to pay for the expense of collecting and remitting taxes (among other costs associated with the income tax). That is part of the invisible tax forced on consumers via prices.What does that have to with the IRS budget or the collection fees the FairTax would pay the states and businesses?!?
Nope - that's nonsense. The drug buyer pays the income tax whether he buys drugs or salted peanuts for the same price. His IT on the money earned is the same. It is the illegal transaction that is being discussed and what taxes are paid on the money generated from that illegal trade. And it IS no "wash" - the FairTax does a much better job of obtaining tax revenue from the illegal activities.
With the drug transaction, the seller eventually uses the funds to purchase at retail and when he does the illustration given applies. It describes what happen with the money the drug dealer spends under the IT and the FairTax. With the FairTax he pays more in taxes - far more - than under the IT.
Once again, Nightie, you're off-the-wall as well as wrong. You also clearly overlook that the FairTax will generate many billions more from the 20 million or so illegal aliens as well as reducing the compliance costs which are merely a non-productive deadweight on the economy (and therefore on taxpayers).
You remind me of Ev Dirksen, when he said something like "... a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about some REAL money ...".
Of course HE was joking ... and knew it.
That was covered in #159 just above.
What does that have to do with everyone receiving their paycheck free of any withholding? Many have proposed on this board that withholding should be eliminated. Why do you disagree?
No, I am well aware of it. The key word is "could".No, the keywords are: "They're both the employee's contribution."
What does that have to do with everyone receiving their paycheck free of any withholding? Many have proposed on this board that withholding should be eliminated. Why do you disagree?What?
Nope - that's nonsense.As usual, logic and reason is lost on a FairTax supporter. That's why y'all are Fanboys.
Now who's grasping at straws? It's the AFT's bill for goodness sake!
What did you do? Read the dictionary last night? Fanboy. Cult. Whatever, dude.
let's say the seller has a good margin of 25% on sales or $25 on the drug dealer's $100. Of this $25, only a small portion would ever possibly end up as tax revenue since the tax on the $25 profit would likely be something like the 15% rate - or $25 x 0.15 = $3.75.Legal or illegal you can't come up with a 20% price reduction by eliminating the income tax. In fact the best you can do is 3.75% and that's on "a good margin of 25%"
Thank you Lapdog for exposing another of your Fairtax frauds using your own math and your own words.
let's say the seller has a good margin of 25% on sales or $25 on the drug dealer's $100. Of this $25, only a small portion would ever possibly end up as tax revenue since the tax on the $25 profit would likely be something like the 15% rate - or $25 x 0.15 = $3.75. This falls far short of the $23 tax "contribution" under the FairTaxIs that supposed to impress us?
Legal or illegal the same tax principle applies.
Once again Lapdog using your example, curently the consumer would pay 3.75% "imbedded" tax...the Fairtax way would be 23% "imbedded" tax...
In other words, just as some of us have been saying all along, the seller would have to increase his prices 30% to cover the increase of the new 23% tax.
Please keep up your idiocy. It's proof that it's all you have
Sorry, Looey, but the 3.75% applies only to the illegal income when spent under the current system.
This has little to do with whatever the entire seller's income tax might be but is merely an example dealing only with the illegal income when spent. The prices increased to the seller involved had already been increased by the embedded taxes that had cascaded into price structures before he sold whatever this item was.
Under the FairTax these prices paid by the seller to purchase his stock will decrease by some good amount allowing him to lower his prices to his customers (including the drug dealer). This lowering might be 5, 10, 20% or even more - point is it will allow a price reduction and most people think that's a good thing. Guess you'd rather see higher prices, eh?
Looey-rithmetic just won't do the job, Looey.
It is quite apparent you don't understand what is being illustrated ... nor embedded taxes either.
The $3.75 amount does not represent embedded taxes but merely the tax revenue the government might collect under the existing system. It shows that illegal income tax revenues under the FairTax are some 600% greater than at present. Embedded tax costs and the seller's pricing are altogether different things.
Most would consider a 600% increase in taxes from illegal income (if not actually more since much of the money spent as illegal income was never taxed to the buyer since it was stolen in the first place). The principle that applies is not at all what you try to make it out to be since it has nothing directly to do with either embedded taxes or with the price decrease under the FairTax.
Thanx for bumping the thread, though.
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