New 9-9-9?
(1) Replace the current 15.3% payroll tax with a 9% payroll tax
(2) Flat 9% business income tax
(3) Falt 9% personal income tax
Is this a better or worse proposal?
Make that Flat, not Falt (fat fingers)!
It taxes only the working class and not the bums and illegals on welfare like a sales tax would.
The important thing about this story is that both Arthuir Laffer and Steve Moore are credited with working with Cain on developing this plan. That is news to me as the MSM has been saying Cain got the idea from the computer game SimCity and an accountant from Cleveland named Lowrie.
Cain has thuis far refused to disclose his economic team, but if it is true that Laffer and Moore have been working with Cain for awhile now on 9-9-9, it is a VERY BIG deal. It means he has been able to attract substantive people to his campaign.
IF they take away the sales tax portion - you eliminate people paying into the system that don’t currently.
Illegal immigrants, underground economy, tax dodgers, foreign visitors to the US, etc.
How are you going to get the “poor” to pay 18%. Have you seen how the left is having fits over 9%?
If there is any change to this plan - I believe the only thing would be to take the sales tax off food and medicine.
One of the problems is to target people with a lot of money and I don’t care what system you use they will evade the tax one way or the other.
Anyway this is a bad if not worse than the original 9-9-9 as it is now guaranteed that the almost 50% who under the current tax code do not pay any federal tax after filing for all the deductions and credit for the minimum earned tax would under the new 9-9-9 pay 18% of their income in taxes and without any deductions. This is called political suicide.
“The American people don’t want it” is a bad reason to ditch the plan. The reason the American people fear the sales tax is they don’t understand that reducing the costs of goods and services sold by virtue of the reduction in income taxes and the elimination of payroll taxes EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, would result in some unknown and in my view, unquantifiable reduction in the price of everything they buy.
I am a small business owner. The sales tax portion of the plan is the part I like the most. The sales tax would eliminate the underground economy, that is the millions who derive income via cash payments, and in the end don’t pay taxes. Also the sales tax would collect from the tourists who come here from all countries.
If there is no sales tax component, then the plan does not become a stepping stone toward a national sales tax, which in my view has tremendous benefits, the first being the elimination of the IRS and the income tax totally. Just my two cents.
I hope Herman sticks to his guns.
(2) Flat 9% business income tax
(3) Falt 9% personal income tax
Is this a better or worse proposal?
9% beats 15.3%.
It also avoids introducing federal sales taxation on top of federal income taxation, although, as it it currently stands, only Republican votes keep Congress from enacting a federal sales tax or VAT. The Donkees would love to let the Bush rates expire, add in a VAT, and see how many votes they can buy with all that extra revenue!
The real solution is to pass a constitutional ban on income taxation at all levels of government. Then work out how consumption taxation is going to work. The good thing about consumption taxes is that everybody who votes feels the pain (along with others, such as illegals, who don't are not supposed to vote).
It's also important that the amount of the consumption tax be visible. People need to know how much they are paying. Relying on voters with skin the game strikes me as the best way to restrain the growth of government.
I like the sales tax! I could avoid most of it! :(
Worse, those who aren’t working still won’t be contributing to the nation’s coffers; and it removes control from the People via the sales tax purchases.
Worse it still allows those who do not pay a thing to remain that way and double taxes to 18% for the producers.