Posted on 12/05/2004 9:03:22 PM PST by APT Project Director
AUTOMATED PAYMENT TRANSACTION (APT) TAX Taxation technology for the 21st century
Dr. Edgar L. Feige, Professor Emeritus of Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the originator of the APT Tax concept, has just produced new estimates suggesting that a broad-based transaction tax as low as six tenths of one percent could replace the entire Federal and State 2005 budget revenue requirements of the United States of America.
The APT concept is elegant in its simplicity - potentially replacing the entire federal and state tax system - including income, corporate profits, excise and estate taxes - in favor of a tiny tax on all transactions. The tax would be automatically deducted from special taxpayer accounts, linked by software to all accounts at financial institutions capable of making final payments to the government seamlessly in real-time. The APT tax therefore eliminates the need for individuals and firms to file income and information tax returns. This is estimated to save citizens and the government roughly $200 billion per year in administration, enforcement, evasion and compliance costs, roughly seven times the amount currently being spent on homeland security.
The APT tax seeks to maximize the goals of both the government and the people - collecting necessary revenue with the lowest possible tax rate. The difference between the APT tax and our current income tax, as well as the proposed consumption taxes, is simplicity, progressivity, and breadth-the APT tax allows for significantly lower rates spread more equally throughout the world of economic activity. The APT is a transaction tax, and as such, taxes every single transaction that occurs in the economy including fund transfers between accounts and transactions involving the exchange of bonds, securities and foreign exchange. Because the wealthy conduct a disproportionate share of these financial transactions, the tax is highly progressive despite its flat rate. Progressivity is achieved through the skewness of tax base itself rather than through the progressive income tax rate structure of the current system. The very small tax is "sliced" off each side of every transaction as it moves electronically through banks and all other qualifying financial institutions. The tax collection is orderly and transparent, the rules are simple and universal and apolitical. The APT system eliminates the entire present tax code. No more exemptions, no more deductions, no more special interest loopholes and no more tax returns.
Feige's 2005 projections of total debits of $881 Tril., and total transactions of $832 Tril. (based on the most recent 2002 Bank for International Settlements data) update the figures he used in his original paper, published in Economic Policy in 2000. Taking the average of these two estimates ($856 Tril.), he conservatively assumes that the replacement of the current tax system with a revenue neutral APT tax will reduce total transactions by 50%. The projected potential APT tax base for 2005 would then be $428 Tril., permitting a revenue neutral flat tax of .57 percent on all transactions or .28 percent on each (buyer and seller) transactor to replace projected 2005 Federal and State tax revenues.
The tax rates required for a "revenue neutral" tax are divided into three phases which are the result of a suggested implementation plan that would gradually replace virtually all Federal and State taxes. The projected tax rates are calculated conservatively, assuming that only 50% of the potential 2005 APT tax base is available, since the volume of total transactions is expected to fall with the introduction of the APT tax. To the extent that transactions decline less than is assumed in the current calculations, an even lower tax rate would be able to raise the requisite revenues. As individuals and businesses use their new found economic freedom, transactions naturally grow over time, suggesting that future tax rates could be even lower.
Utilizing 50% of the projected APT tax base for 2005 of $856 Tril., that is, $428 Tril, the estimated tax rates required to raise the revenues projected for 2005 budgets are as follows:
Phase I (Eliminate all Federal taxes other than SS and Medicare) Required revenue neutral target=$1.242 Tril: Required tax rate = 0.29% per transaction or 0.15% per transactor.
Phase II (Eliminate all Federal taxes including Social Security and Medicare "payroll" taxes) Required revenue neutral target = $2.036 Tril. Required tax rate = 0.48 % per transaction or 0.24% per transactor.
Phase III (Eliminate all Federal taxes including Social Security and Medicare "payroll" taxes and all State personal income; corporate profits and sales taxes) Required revenue neutral target = $2.436 Tril. Required tax rate = 0.57% per transaction or 0.28% per transactor.
The estimates above are based on 2005 revenue and transaction projections. Implementing the three phases will require several years and careful government management, especially the third phase. However, Dr. Feige has built in a safeguard for the APT Tax by calculating the required tax rate based on only half of the transactions that are actually observed.
Examples: Assuming full implementation of Phase three: 1. $100 restaurant bill would have a tax to the customer estimated to be 28 cents and the restaurant would pay 28 cents. 2. $50,000 family income deposited and spent or moved to savings results in $100,000 of transactions paying a total tax of $280 distributed over all the individual transactions as they occurred through the year. These amounts would be doubled if businesses fully shifted their tax burden to the consumer, but nowhere near the $15,000 to $20,000 the family would pay under the current federal and state systems.
It is now important to begin the process of planning the economic, legal, technical and administrative requirements necessary for a smooth and transparent transition from the current tax system to an APT system. The proposed, new collection system will be tested by computer simulation to capture all potential errors and omissions (new job for the IRS). Then, it will take several years to rollout, especially Phase III involving central collection and distribution to the States. A national commitment to this revolutionary, fair, automatic and lowest cost tax system is needed NOW!
For more details, please visit www.apttax.com
William J Hermann, Jr. MD, Director APT Tax Project Contact: administrator@apttax.com , 713-932-3773
The lender will not pick up the tax in the loan amount as it throws recovery on resale out the window
Not correct, making the lender whole(in regards the NRST) above converts that residential property back into business asset for resale purposes it is treated as if the original sale never occurred.
Here's some additional situations under which the same kind of thing can occur, (i.e. converting private assets into business use assets, such as the residence converted to a rental situation I spoke of earlier where the owner is credited with NRST that he originally paid as a consumption buyer allowing him to collect NRST from the renter as a service transaction.)
H.R.25Fair Tax Act of 2003 (Introduced in House)
`SEC. 202. BUSINESS USE CONVERSION CREDIT.`(a) IN GENERAL- For purposes of section 201, a person's business use conversion credit for any month is the aggregate of the amounts determined under subsection (b) with respect to taxable property and services--
`(b) AMOUNT OF CREDIT- The amount determined under this paragraph with respect to any taxable property or service is the lesser of--
|
Also, a large accumulated tax hit on end use consumption is a very strong incentive for evasion.
Since your turnover tax is a large accumulated tax hit on end use consumption, there is a lager incentive for evasion of the tax through vertical merger activity, and just plain going to a cash underground economy to totally get away from government oversight.
Can't see as how your turnover tax will do anything more than a VAT or corporate tax of any other kind does in those lines. The corporate tax in this country give rise to very little evasion, except of the single proprietor and small business level, the same folks that will be inclined to evade your turnover tax.
There really is no tax system out there that does away with incentive to evade. In fact the data suggests the more pervasive government is in its attempts to collect taxes the less efficient and successful it becomes at it. People are just naturally resentful of a government hitting on their businesses and personal resources. The more govenment tries the more evasion it evokes.
That is why an NRST would be no worse that the current income/payroll tax system or for that matter the current VATs plus at source wage taxes of the EU, with evasion rates running from 15-35% pf their GDP.
Get a clue, evasion is not a business proposition, it is a strike at overwhelming government.
Business survives such governemet by passing tax and costs on or goes bankrupt. People survive such governments by going underground rather than just fold or die.
Good example is the USSR, tax evasion became a virtual artform necessary to survival in the old USSR inspite of the risks involved in it's dictatorial centralized government and theoretical stangle hold on its economy including turnover taxes of the same nature as your APT.
I'd like to see the math on that. Am I to understand that the fed would pick up the difference between what the bank can sell the home for and the actual loss? Banks don't rent real estate, at least in the residential sect, if they can sell the property. Regardless of whether the home is still considered new by transition, the home has still been lived in, and in all but the rarest cases will need some work, be it simple cosmetics or major repairs. Legal description aside, that home is used, and any buyer willing to pay more that appraised value (at the most) is a fool.
On the other side of it, if the fed is willing to cover losses due to this kind of transaction, then interest rates would be dramaticly lower, since the lender has no risk of loss. The banks are then free to write a loan to anybody they like regardless of eligability, because they are in effect insured by the treasury department. We will see credit abuse like we haven't seen since the 80's. On the upside, anybody willing to exploit this hole could make a lot of money from it.
Now, what happens if the owner/builder does what I did, and mortgages out the house on the original title? As a new house, this is technically the end of the production chain. So am I still taxed on my own labor? Or does the tax go on the first SALE, which could be years down the road, or possibly never occur at all?
The cost of evading such a low tax would be greater than compliance, in most cases. In other words, a 30% (NST) tax has a much higher incentive for evasion than does a .3% APT tax. Also, from the producer's perspective, the tax savings under NST at the various steps of production, are taken back at the retail level. There is no net tax savings and therefore no supply side tax cut stimulus. NST simply consolidates and collects all the otherwise accumulating taxes at the end, at the point of retail sale.
The cost of evading such a low tax would be greater than compliance, in most cases. In other words, a 30% (NST) tax has a much higher incentive for evasion than does a .3% APT tax.
Most cases is not the issue, greatest dollar volume in high capital turnover is, that is the smaller case where the tax flow is extracted, the <20% of collection points doing >80% of the dollar volume in high frequency trasactions.
As that APT tax eats heavily into capital, as it will in high turnover of the mass sales objects of the APT taxt, the incentive to evade and avoid will rise exponentially. That is where the APT will fail as have all such transaction taxes. SAJ has laid the case clearly for his industry, it also goes for all who are involved in volume trading with narrow margins, the grocery and volume discount market to the day trader all have that kind of situation.
That 0.3% is upon the whole capital value of a goods and investment/financial instruments, it hits the same capital each time it enters into any finacial transaction when reapplying capital in the turnover of production & sales.
Therein lay the bogus claim of 0.3%, the same capital is repeatedly taxed, the greater the number of times it is turned over in volume sales for example (a necessity in volume production of goods at most efficient and lowest competitive market price) the higher the effective burden on the capital is. Every penny of capital lost to that tax, every penny lost to the deadweight loss of that transaction, every penny lost to overhead must be made up in returns from that transaction to the business or the product ceases to by viable and will be removed from market.
The compliance costs come out in handling implementing th tax on practical level, the level of attention to record keepting for tax audit, the costs involved in reducing the impact of said tax associated with vertical integration via business mergers to limit the number of transactions in producing a given product to the minimum possible. That alone costs the losses inherent the vertical monopoly exercises over small businesses and upon consumer prices. The loss of sales volume due to higher prices to the consumer making up for all the losses through the entire chain of transactions necessary to the production and delivery of final product to the consumer.
As far as individual evasion, the individual, single propriator and small business will turn to simply turn to cash transactions to avoid the multiple taxation of their banking and financial accounts whenever it is possible for them to do so. No one is going to want government anywhere close to the kind of data collection capacity over the individual's financial life and by extension personal life a universal turnover tax represents.
Evasion will just as firmly entrenched into the culture of the APT as it is today in the EU VAT nations 15-35%, which claims to provide incentive to business to play the game. .
NST simply consolidates and collects all the otherwise accumulating taxes at the end, at the point of retail sale.
Yes that is what a VAT, and your APT does accumulate taxes passing down to the end of the chain. The vat in a fractional summation into a fixed estimatable burden, the APT in exponential accumulation with effective rate of taxation on capital only limited by the number of transactions the capital round robins through.
The NRST, (i.e. Nationl Retail Sales Tax) however taxes only at a single stage, at a single trasaction, and at a single rate, it adds nothing to upsteam overhead costs, and totally removes all deadweight loss situations upstream from the retail level.
Having fewer collection points as opposed to the many collection points of VATs and the APT turnover tax systems, cummulative overhead transaction costs are minimized creating lower unit pricing to the end consumer. The overall deadweight losses on the NRST are as a consequence also much lower than those of the VAT ond the APT turnover taxes.
All in all the delivery price paid by the consumer with tax under an RST is much lower than the VAT, and lower still than the APT turnover tax. The price received by the producer at all stages after tax is much more profitable in volume and hence more affordable to the end consumer.
Frankly the only reason that an APT would sell, is to the politician in its ability to hide the cost of government behind a wall of inflation. Pretending to 0.3% yet budening each of us with costs much greater than merely the effective 30% of consumption actually delivered as revenue to government.
Not only is the APT turnover tax an inefficient tax with regard to the economy, it is a fraud on the electorate, allowing government to extract more from the citizen in mechanisms hidden from his direct view than would ever be possible under at tax system fully open to the citizen's perceptions.
Sorry, your APT tax sounds great for dictatorships, socialists and stagnate economies, I'm not in the least interested in seeing what it could to our nation.
Go test it out in India and other East Pacific and Indian ocean nations, looks like several are considering something very close to it as an alternative to their current tax systems.
You will find numerous papers and articles among these Google Search: Turnover tax & VATs results.
If it works to fire up their economies and provide rising standards of living for their people, then you can come back and demonstate actual results instead of blowing smoke. Until then no go Charlie!!!
With APT, production costs are lower, retail prices are lower, compliance costs are much lower. These are all pro-growth.
You are merely blowing smoke.
You tell us 0.3% collected from the individual out of his expended income for consumption and investment/saving. That is 0.3% of personal expenditure, (i.e. 0.3% of 0.8*GDP) effectively 0.24% of GDP extracted visibly from individual citizen's transactions in our economy.
Federal plus state government revenues collected run roughly 30% of GDP and that is not counting the incremental costs of the the APT tax on every transaction occuring throught the GDP chain all $60Trillion turnover(circular cash flow) capital dollars of it.
Guess where all the taxes and costs lay hidden. Not in sight of the citizen that is for certain, but definitely in the retail prices of all investment and consumption purchased by that citizen.
Take your APT baloney and stuff it.
Exchanges have developed many excesses as a result of trading tax free, subsidized by the productive sector. Securities, currencies, futures, and options are not involved in the production process. They are the "after markets", derivatives of the productive sector. By shifting a large part of the overall tax burden to these exchanges, the tax relief to the productive sector causes economic expansion, which in turn expands exchange trading.
There's nothing sinister about pro-growth tax reform. Taxes must be paid, just like any other economic cost. NST has it's virtues, but APT surpasses it. With NST I can't imagine people looking at their Walmart receipt and getting worked up enough to call their Congressman. Most informed people already know how much the government taxes. It's an accepted thing, and that's not about to change.
Am I to understand that the fed would pick up the difference between what the bank can sell the home for and the actual loss?
No, the fed credits any NRST remitted out of the loan back to the lender.
From there the house becomes a taxfree business asset for lender to do as they will. They will get out of resale of the house the same as they would (aftertax) under the current tax system.
Regardless of whether the home is still considered new by transition, the home has still been lived in,
And??? That is true of any repossession. That loss is built into the mortguage rates that financial instituions charge on loans. The issue is what is done concerning making the lender whole as regards taxes remitted from the sale that the failed mortgage financed.
and in all but the rarest cases will need some work, be it simple cosmetics or major repairs.
All of which are done at not tax cost to the lender or any business involved in that work.
Legal description aside, that home is used, and any buyer willing to pay more that appraised value (at the most) is a fool.
Not the issue!! NRST on the sale is. The new home had ~30K taxes remitted to government out of the the $135K loan against the home. Those taxes not recovered in payments before default are credited back to the lender who remitted them to the government.
What the lender can get out of the taxfree repossession value of the house is entirely a separate issue, on resale a new NRST will be levied.
The lender is made whole as regard the federal tax remitted from the defaulted mortgage that is all. It is up to the lender, same as in the any tax system to assure his profitability by charging mortgauge rates sufficient to cover the basic financial risks the lender undertakes. That is true in all markets.
On the other side of it, if the fed is willing to cover losses due to this kind of transaction
Only the unrecovered NRST my friend, there is no subsidy of the base transaction, merely a return of excess tax remitted.
The banks are then free to write a loan to anybody they like regardless of eligability, because they are in effect insured by the treasury department. We will see credit abuse like we haven't seen since the 80's. On the upside, anybody willing to exploit this hole could make a lot of money from it.
You are on a real flight of fancy aren't you, try actually reading the bill instead of drifting into fantasy land. The NRST payment covered in the mortgage is all that is credited to the lender, not the basic valuation of the house Jeez.
I'm not particularly impressed with people trying to play gottcha games.
Now, what happens if the owner/builder does what I did, and mortgages out the house on the original title? As a new house, this is technically the end of the production chain. So am I still taxed on my own labor? Or does the tax go on the first SALE, which could be years down the road, or possibly never occur at all?
If you are certified business converting a residential property into a business asset, then you will be due the business conversion credit on the property you have converted to business use, (i.e. a rental.)
If not, the NRST is already paid in the first sale, taking no credits just means no more will be due a on resale of that residential (i.e. non-business) property.
Tax once but only once is the rule. Conversion of a non-business property to a business use results in an NRST credit for NRST previously remitted and not previously recovered through business credit.
Read the dang'd legislation. Chapter 2 covers NRST business credits side of the NRST, Chapter 8 covers particulars on loans and mortgages and the NRST charged in relation to loans brokerage services.
H.R.25Fair Tax Act of 2003 (Introduced in House)
TITLE I--REPEAL OF THE INCOME TAX, PAYROLL TAXES, AND ESTATE AND GIFT TAXES
`CHAPTER 1--INTERPRETATION; DEFINITIONS; IMPOSITION OF TAX; ETC.
`CHAPTER 3--FAMILY CONSUMPTION ALLOWANCE
`CHAPTER 4--FEDERAL AND STATE COOPERATIVE TAX ADMINISTRATION
`CHAPTER 5--OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE PROVISIONS
`CHAPTER 6--COLLECTIONS; APPEALS; TAXPAYER RIGHTS
`CHAPTER 8--FINANCIAL INTERMEDIATION SERVICES
`CHAPTER 9--ADDITIONAL MATTERS
|
Good evening.
By shifting a large part of the overall tax burden to these exchanges,
At least until you have killed your exchanges off and have no economy left for lack of anyone to take the otherhalf of your trade.
the tax relief to the productive sector causes economic expansion, which in turn expands exchange trading.
LOL, no exchanges left to tax, you have driven them overseas to tax havens, who does the tax fall on next?
Taxes must be paid, just like any other economic cost.
True, and those who bear the burden the voter and individual must be congnizant of that economic cost in order that government be propertly limited and held to account by the electorate.
NST has it's virtues,
As demonstrable in economic studies and in relation to its role in requiring congnizant participaion of all citizens and appraising the citizen of the true burdens of government in relations to its costs.
but APT surpasses it.
Only insofar as it may empower government, from the citizens perspective and the political future of the nation, the APT is a disaster.
With NST I can't imagine people looking at their Walmart receipt and getting worked up enough to call their Congressman.
Certainly is true of VATs, another of those hidden tax systems.
You apparently do not live in a place with retail sales taxes do you. The folks around here get up in arms at the whiff of a retail sales tax increase.
The NRST on the otherhand assures the citizen is fully congnizant of the burden imposed on them, and allows them the opportunity to excerise an informed vote.
Most informed people already know how much the government taxes.
Unfortunately there is that horrendously large majority that are basically very much uniformed of the true burdens impressed on them by government through the roll of government taxations of business. Frankly, I prefer those folks to be informed. You see they vote too.
It's an accepted thing,
By you obviously, being one of the "informed" ones?
and that's not about to change.
That you apparently hope to make sure it stays that with with the APT, is readily apparent. I wonder what happens when the majority of folks become informed instead of just pushing the levers as guided by their trusty politicians.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw
for
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-Voltaire (1764
Your desire to hide taxation from the eyes of the individual citizen it deplorable. Playing the ostrich will not make it go away, trying to pass it on to the other guy will not make it go away, in fact experience has shown that such manner of taxation inevitably rises until it so burdens an economy that a nation is driven to stagnation.
Ostriches may be a somewhat successful species by making themselves look like a bush or tree hiding their head in the sand. Unfortunately low flying buzzards roost in trees and sh't all overthem.
"Taxes have nothing to do with eternal vigilence. They are how a people collectively fund their government. With the requirement to file tax returns, people are not scrutinizing where their money goes,. Just look at this last election. How much play did taxation and government spending get?"
That is because we currently have nearly half the population that is not carrying any burden, and in many cases these individuals are adding to the burden. When you have half the electorate not carrying the weight, then it is no longer an issue. The only remaining issue is the benefits that can be used to purchase votes from that segment of the electorate. Oh, yeah, if you can increase that pool of voters (say only tax the rich) then you can also purchase more votes.
"How will NST be any different?"
All members of the electorate will be carrying a portion of the weight of the largesse used to fund unconstitutional elements of the federal government.
I have yet to see any pro-APTer address the million transactions a day that a US OEM makes and will be forced to pay taxes on and pass that cost along to the customer. I have yet to see any pro-APTer address how this is good for the American worker? Why support a tax policy that gives a competitive edge to foriegn manufacturers?
Regardless of where the tax revenue is generated, the costs are carried by some portion of the 230-250 million American citizens that we have. The pro-APTers seem to think that there is some other element that will just absorb the tax burden. The bottom line is that the citizens pay the tax burden, either through direct taxation or through economic theft (price increases, lower productivity, etc.). Shouldn't the citizens have the ability to directly see the burden they are carrying? Shouldn't the largest segment of citizens be carrying the burden? According to the answers I have seen here, the biggest selling point to the proposal is the ability to keep the burden hidden from the citizens. How is that a good thing?
How do you expect government reduction if you don't give the citizen the power of knowledge with which they would hold the elected responsible?
I keep seeing from the pro-APTers the statements that the markets transactions will be taxed, that the unproductive trading will be taxed, etc. What will this do to my retirement investments (401K's), mutual funds, health care ins. premiums, etc. What the proposal does is hit the people who saves for the future the hardest. How is placing the larger burden on the frugal best for this country?
Needless to say, I have asked these questions of the pro-NRSTers and the Flat Taxers. Generally they have well thought out answers to these questions and both are convincing. I have decided that the NRST is the best proposal I have seen so far. Now is the pro-APTers opportunity to do the same. Convince me.
How many first time home buyers buy new homes? I don't know the answer, but my guess is it is very low. In addition, your forgetting about home equity. Most people don't save for that home upgrade, they realize it when they sell their used first home.....
Consider this just to see how the APT tax will work.
Start with Social Security/Medicare payroll tax.
a. A tax break for everyone that receives a paycheck.
b. A Tax break for employers.
c. Eliminates SS funding crisis for politicians.
d. Gets system up and running for testing.
To get the APT tax system started all of the software and
systems could be set up with a very tiny rate just to
address the Social security shortfall. Then when everyone
realizes how simple that was there will be tremendous
momentum to expand the concept to replace other taxes and
eventually replace all of the code and associated taxes.
A rate of 0.01% per transaction or 0.02% per transaction
would raise $100 billion per year which would more than
offset the accumulating deficit in the program. If you
wanted to completely eliminate the SS/Medicare payroll tax
-- the most regressive tax we have would take 0.19% per
transaction or approx 0.095% per transactor then toss in the
other 0.01% to solve the problem and you've got a rate of
0.105% or $1.05 per $1000 in transactions (a $50,000
income which is all spent would be $100,000 in transactions
or $105 instead of 7.5% of 50K or $3750 not to mention
the $3750 the employer has to pay).
Could I have a show of hands of those who want to pay
$105, and now those who want to pay $3750?
Consider this just to see how the APT tax will work.
Start with Social Security/Medicare payroll tax.
a. A tax break for everyone that receives a paycheck.
b. A Tax break for employers.
c. Eliminates SS funding crisis for politicians.
d. Gets system up and running for testing.
To get the APT tax system started all of the software and
systems could be set up with a very tiny rate just to
address the Social security shortfall. Then when everyone
realizes how simple that was there will be tremendous
momentum to expand the concept to replace other taxes and
eventually replace all of the code and associated taxes.
A rate of 0.01% per transaction or 0.02% per transaction
would raise $100 billion per year which would more than
offset the accumulating deficit in the program. If you
wanted to completely eliminate the SS/Medicare payroll tax
-- the most regressive tax we have would take 0.19% per
transaction or approx 0.095% per transactor then toss in the
other 0.01% to solve the problem and you've got a rate of
0.105% or $1.05 per $1000 in transactions (a $50,000
income which is all spent would be $100,000 in transactions
or $105 instead of 7.5% of 50K or $3750 not to mention
the $3750 the employer has to pay).
Could I have a show of hands of those who want to pay
$105, and now those who want to pay $3750?
Again, not much time here, I'm on lunch. But this is not an attempt at "gotcha games". The fact is that this part of the plan has a very direct effect on my short and medium term plans, and I would like to understand it as well as I can. I'm still reading the H.R.25 proposal, and compiling notes. Hopefully then I won't be quite so annoying to you in my line of questioning. Bear with me here, I see you as a valuable learning tool.
To CSM, I'll try to dig up that stat on first time/new buyers. As it pertains to me, though, it's more about investment.
Could I have a show of hands of those who want to pay
$105
Sorry, hiding the rest of the tax burden in consumption expenditure dosen't do the trick.
You want to believe in $105. The reality, the rest derived from the cost of goods, services, stagnation of wages, and loss in retirment pension returns. all $7,500 plus the overhead cost and deadweight loss that arise out of a system that taxes the full capital of every turnover transaction making up GDP.
There aren't any free lunches friend . You pay it up front minimizing the overhead & upsteams costs involved, or pay it in inflationary pricing with all the burdens attendant with a ubiquitous tax system besides.
Pre-WWII Europe tried those turnover taxes and destroyed world economies with them. You think you're getting a freebee but look behind the curtains, the piper gets paid no matter what. And that guy that pays the piper will always be you.
oops, double click...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.