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With APT you have to stop and do the math. The answer to will a prescription drug bought by a poor person be taxed - the answer is YES - how horrible. But the $70 purchase will be taxed about 18 CENTS and NO FICA will be taken from his/her paycheck. If we can get the states to agree on a distribution system there would be no state sales tax and the tax on $70 would rise to 21 CENTS. If the nasty drugstore passes its share of the tax on the the customer it would be 36 CENTS (18 x 2). If cash were used, the store would pass their share on to the customer because they would deposit cash in the bank but there would be no tax on the customers side for the cash -- one side of a cash transaction is 44 CENTS. That's about every scenario and none are more than $1.

The no exemptions, no deductions policy recommended is designed to take a big bite out of outside influence on politicians.

If we can get the states to agree on a distribution system

Are states then to give up their soverignty over how they collect their own revenues?

You do realise that this is something that cannot be imposed upon states by federal government due to the lack of Constitutional authority in this matter.

According to aggregate figures, in relation to gross family income, a tax that covers both state and federal government would be on the order of around 33%+ revenue neutral to 2000 taxlaw.

Unfortunately the Bush tax cuts have not been made permanent, so that is where we stand, at present

>>>>With APT you have to stop and do the math. The answer to will a prescription drug bought by a poor person be taxed - the answer is YES - how horrible. But the $70 purchase will be taxed about 18 CENTS and NO FICA will be taken from his/her paycheck.<<<<

I'm certainly no economist, but I can see something very deceptive about this proposal. We all know that the consumer ultimately pays all taxes. We pay the taxes that the producers have paid all through the process of bringing a product to market through the cost of the item. It would be no different with this tax. So the $70 prescription you are talking about would have cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 today?

If your proposed tax would reduce my share of taxes by 70 times what I pay now, all those taxes I would no longer pay outright would have to be paid by some other means (since we know the government is not going to operate on 70 times less money). This means they would have to be paid by all the transactions made to produce the product I buy, which will be passed along as increased costs.

It may SOUND like I'm paying almost no tax, but my buying power would be no more than now, and perhaps even less. I don't see how this is better than an NRST, and in fact would be worse because even a very tiny tax increase would be added to every transcation made in producing a product and therefore increase the cost by many, many times the percent of the tax increase.