Damn straight! Are you familiar with the FairTax, a plan for a National Retail Sales Tax that would replace ALL federal income, payroll, corporate, capital gains, and estate taxes with a 23% across-the-board retail sales tax? It's picking up major steam in congress (HR 25). If you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer them.
That would be nice, but how do you tell people that a 4-5% tariff is excessive, yet a 23% sales tax is not? If 4-5% is killing trade, then what is 23% going to do to sales?
The 'business cost' exception looks like a vehicle that everyone with an account will be able to drive complete tax avoidance through. That bothers me. Further, I'm not interested in a tax that replaces the 2+ Trillion dollars the government takes, I want them to take much less. Instead of a general sales tax, which they would continually lever up like they did the income tax (have you ever seen the original, 1913 income brackets and tax rates?). I prefer something along the lines of our original system of excise taxes to fund the federal government. This puts the final control over government purse strings in the hands of consumers by allowing them to adopt alternatives and curb egregious taxation.
I don't dispute that a consumption based taxed is superior to an income tax, but I don't like this proposal because the flaws are too great, imo.
Repeal the 16th amendment and enforce the 13th. End the wealth transfers and you'd cut over half the government spending in one stroke.