[Your Nightmare]

Oh, but it is - a theoretical VAT. Like most theoretical things, we see the flaws in the system every day along with the crushing administrative costs and burdens of operating such a system.

I can only shake my head. If you think our current system is a VAT, there is nothing I could possible say to make you believe otherwise. [So all this time we thought we had an income tax when we really had a VAT...who knew!]

That's why calling either VATs or flat taxes "consumption taxes" is both pointless and misleading - they are that in theory only.

A NRST is only a theoretical consumption tax. Buying something at retail does not mean you'v consumed it. If I buy car, have I consumed that entire car? No. But I've paid the sales tax as if I had. Under a more accurate consumption tax, I wouldn't pay a retail sales tax on the car but would pay a periodic tax on the imputed rental value of the car.

[pigdog]

Nonsense. I told you it was a theoretical consumption tax (or VAT) whichever you prefer.

No matter what you call it it is not a real consumption tax as is the FairTax which, despite your unreasoned example, collect the tax when the thing is purchased for consumption. Whether consumed then or later matters not and it's a far far cleaner and simpler system that your "theoretical consumption taxes" (VAT, round, or flat) like the one we presently call the income tax.

The FairTax is truly a consumption tax with the tax collected when the thing is purchased for consumption.

[pigdog]

Certainly is is nothing if not real - and certainly not "theoretical".

Buying a thing at retail is when the item is consumed from a tax standpoint and your attempts to shilly-shally and misdirect to define consumption to be only when you "use up" a thing as consumption is truly nonsense.

For the purposes of the FairTax the purchase and paying the tax thereon IS consumption and that's the way it is considered in the bill. The sad thing about all this is that you certainly know this amd are merely being intentionally obtuse ... no one is that stupid.