Listen Americans
the libertarian notion I believe to have a very low income tax as flat tax, no loopholes, you can fire half the IRS there
complemented by a national sales tax, I take it you all have state sales tax, we in Canada have been paying national sales tax since 1990
now others advocate no income taxes at all and a national sales tax
but because you get cycles of economic downturn I would argue the combination would work better so the government has more stable source of revenue......
now the good news in Canada our income tax rates have come down slowly (perhaps at the expense of the quality of our health care and military, what military) but we still pay too much income tax IMO and the reality is the reduction in federal and provincial taxes, over the last decade or so have been offset by higher property taxes and user fees as each level of government downloaded onto the next lower level
I cannot remember but I think there is one country in Europe that has a low flat tax on income combined with what they called Value Added Tax
now after a while you get used to and don't pay attention to the sale tax......
if you are paying half as much income tax then a reasonable national sales tax wouldn't be onerous at all and again the more people spend, the more expensive the item, yeah it's a consumption tax
the key is get the right balance, the right percentage, here so you don't slow down the market
in Canada they introduced the Good and Services Tax, effectively adding a 7 per cent tax on a number of items not previously tax in the same year as hard hitting recession (keep in mind though it also replaced an old tax on certain goods that was 13.5%)
we sell residential houses, we got double whammied in 1990
they brought in the Goods and Services Tax on new housing at the same time the municipality brought in development charges (to fund the cost of new infrastructure necessitated by new subdivisions) - with mortgage rates around 14 per cent we couldn't pass on the extra money to the consumer or we wouldn't sell anything and those two taxes almost eroded our net profit per unit......
but times improved, house prices have gone up tremendously, though costs have too, but the profit margins are nice again.....
the paperwork for the GST is a bitch, at least the provincial sales tax, they give you 5 per cent of what you collect as commission, so you can at least offset your increased bookkeeping costs.......
the other thing is for lower income people, they get a quarterly cheque from the Government called the GST Tax Credit to give them relief from the GST they have to pay on their purchases etc.......
It's a different animal. Check it out.
All good ideas - the principal problem here in America is that we have uncontrolled spending at the federal level. Neither the administration nor the Congress have any interest in restraining spending. We also have a very regressive income tax structure in which the most productive are the most taxed, and the least taxed are approaching 50% of the voting population. When we reach the tipping point (over 50% of voters being net recipients of income from the federal government) all hell will break loose. Thus the idea that all voters (minus those below some predetermined poverty level - and that in itself causes problems) should feel the pain of unrestrained federal spending.
Thanks for weighing in from Canada, I love it up there.