[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

So, you thought a national sales tax was a good idea???

[elbucko]

So, you thought a national sales tax was a good idea???

I never have and have posted so on this forum only to be chewed on by the financial morons. I hate the IRS as much as anybody. I have been in business since I left the Army in '75. I've been audited and harassed and I still would not want a National Sales Tax or a VAT (national labor and sales tax).

I am not a Marxist. Far from it. I remain a Goldwater/Reagan Republican. However, though Marx was in favor of it, to his credit he was right. The "Progressive Income Tax" is the fairest way to tax a free population. How the progressive income tax is authorized and implemented is the problem.

There are those that dispute that. Fine, you're welcome to your opinion and your ignorance. But within five years of a National Sales Tax, or consumption tax, there will be such an economic depression in the US that it will make the Great Depression seem like a recession.

[ThinkDifferent]

So, you thought a national sales tax was a good idea???

Yep, and I still do. This article provides a bunch of worst-case scenarios (like abolition of cash purchases) that are equally or more likely to come about if we keep the current income tax. Quibbling about what the sales rate would be is pointless. If it's too high, that just means that the government is spending too much, and the NRST would expose that.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I think that the sales tax could be a good thing. The way its described here, definitely not.

If we get rid of the current tax situation totally, and constitutionally limit the tax rate to, say, no more than 30% of the purchase price of items and don't give any rebates to the people, it might be a good idea.

Personally, I'd say that a better idea would be to keep the present system, but make withholding illegal. That way, people would have to pony up the money for taxes themselves. When they have to write a check to the IRS for thousands of dollars each year, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will be more concerned about the cost of the government.

[Robert Drobot]

Doesn't Russia get by with a flat tax of 13%???

I could buy into that scheme.