The idea of a NRST is not only bad based on economic grounds -
You are indeed full of unfounded assertions aren't you.
Just the short list of economic advantages of the NRST over the current income/payroll tax system:
- Dramatically reduce the costs of goods and services by 20 to 25 percent.
- Allow you to keep 100 percent of your paycheck, pension, and Social Security payments.
- Gross Domestic Product will increase by almost 10.5 percent in the first year after enactment.
- Compliance costs would decrease by 90 percent.
- Real investment would initially increase by 76 percent relative to the investment that would be made under present law. While this increase would gradually decline, it remains 15 percent higher than under the existing tax structure.
- Exports would increase by 26 percent initially and would remain more than 13 percent above the level under the current tax system.
- Real wages will increase.
- The working poor would experience an increase in real lifetime consumption of between 8 and 14 percent.
- Increases incentives to work by as much as 20 percent in many households, leading to higher economic growth and efficiency.
- Interest rates will fall 25 to 35 percent.
it doesn't stand a chance of being passed (replacement taxes for the income tax have been floated for over 35 years & where have they gone).
In otherwords we can't do it because we haven't done it.
LOL, there was a time when there was no income tax and it replaced all others inspite of taking from the war of 1812 when one was first proposed by the Treasury department, to 1860 when the first income tax was enacted. Strange how time and politics change.
The repeal of a Constitutional Ammendment is just one tiny obstacle to overcome
No constitutional amendment is necessary to remove the income tax from the statutes, nor put a retail sales tax inplace. Just political will with th American people giving them a bit of push.
Once the the NRST is in place completely replacing the income/payroll taxes (i.e. those taxes on income referred to in the 16th ammendment), 90% of the obstacle for prohibition of income taxes by Constitutional amendment disappears.
and would take years/decades to get done.
Remove the income tax from the statutes and putting an NRST in its place merely takes no more effort than any revenue bill does for enactment. Once in place, a constitutional amendment to repeal the 16th and prohibit all taxes on income becomes quite feasible and can take as long as necessary to get it done.
Theories are great for discussion but don't mean anything unless they are really doable & the NRST is 'dead on arrival'.
Whistling pass the graveyard I see. Is that the best argument you can find for not taxing consumption instead of income?
I can find many reasons to dump the income/payroll taxes:
Adam Smith, the father of modern economic thought, had a lot to say about taxation in his still great book Wealth of Nations pp. 561-64. Here is what he had to say about bad taxes:
1. A tax was bad that required a large bureaucracy for administration.
2. A tax was bad that "may obstruct the industry of the people, and discouraged them form applying to certain branches which might give maintenance and employment to great multitudes. While it obliges the people to pay, it may thus diminish, or perhaps destroy, some of the funds which might enable them more easily to do so."
3. A tax was bad that encouraged evasion. "The law, contrary all the ordinary principals of justice, first creates the temptation, and then punishes those who yield to it. "Evasion is also bad, says Smith, because it tends to "put an end to the benefits which the community might have received from the employment of their capitals."
4. A tax is bad that put the people through "odious examinations of the tax-gatherers, and exposes them to much unnecessary trouble, vexation, and oppression...It is in one or other of these four different ways that taxes are frequently so much more burdensome to the people than they are beneficial to the sovereign"
The income tax doesn't miss a single beat. As has been know since before the 16th amendment:
"A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man's counting house....The law will of necessity have inquisical features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the tax payer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state."
-- Virginian House Speaker Richard E. Byrd, 1910, predicting the consequences of an income tax.
The NRST:
H.R.25, S.1493
A bill to promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national retail sales tax to be administered primarily by the States.
it is very much alive and kicking with 52 co-signers on the bill and Congressional support growing every month. It now has more support than any other bill providing complete tax reform.
Even long time ardent proponents of the "Flat Tax" like Senator Richard Shelby (Armey/Shelby Flat Tax) are now expressing their preference for the NRST over the flat income tax they have long promoted:
'We know it's not perfect' (Shelby on the Stump in Alabama)
- His preference for a sales tax is even greater than the flat tax he has promoted for years,
There, that's more accurate.
You're welcome.