Posted on 11/04/2004 7:08:31 PM PST by MNJohnnie
I'll betcha that there is a smile in heaven today, bigger than all the others, on the face of our ole buddy Chief_negotiator!
See above.
That is interesting, but I am going to say that I believe strongly in tax simplificaiton. 99.5% of us should be able to figure out our income taxes on one side of one sheet of paper. Cut all the deductions and credits, cut tax rates correspondingly, state how much you earned and pay the corresponding tax. Leave our money to us and let us figure out whether we want to spend our money on education or retirement savings or energy reducing vehicles or whatever.
Your're on the pinger :O)
Absolutely not. It takes all of the worst features of an income tax, mixes them with a VAT, and hides in the weeds so that no one has any idea how much it really costs them.
Bush and 51 members of congress are already on board. There will be hearings next year. I love it !!!
Make that, at minimum, 55 members of the House & 2 in the Senate as co-sponsors with more to come in the 2004 session.
Deducting expenses basically means paying for those expenses with pre-tax money. Under an NRST every purchase would be made with pre-tax money.
That is interesting, but I am going to say that I believe strongly in tax simplificaiton. 99.5% of us should be able to figure out our income taxes on one side of one sheet of paper.
On a retail sales tax there no tax to be figured or filed by the individual. Retail sales taxes are collected by the business when a customer pays for goods or services.
The form filed by the individual citzen for a retail sale tax looks like this, both sides:
|
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Individual income reporting is not required paying retail sales taxes.
absolutely! When they bring the IRS down I'll believe.
Cut all the deductions and credits, cut tax rates correspondingly, state how much you earned and pay the corresponding tax.
Why should you have to state anything at all about how much you earned to pay a tax on retail goods and services?
Leave our money to us and let us figure out whether we want to spend our money on education or retirement savings or energy reducing vehicles or whatever.
Under a retail sales tax only system, you get your full gross paycheck to do what you will with. Save or invest tax free, or purchase new goods or services paying the tax at the cash register.
No individual reporting of income nor person accounting for expenditures required at all. It is all done at the point of sale collected by the retail business for which you receive a receipt detailing price of products, and tax paid. Just as is done with state/local retail sales tax systems today.
In fact under HR25, the NRST would be administered by state tax authorities in parallel with their own sales taxes.
The problem with the flat tax, is that it is still an income tax, and whether or not you file, you are still liable to keep records and open to audit by the IRS. That is not the case with a retail sales tax.
Furthermore, it should be noted this nation's first income tax was a flat tax like you describe, it didn't survive a single session of Congress before it began morphing into the graduated tax system we deal with today, they added two brackets in the following year and started the games with deductions.
Good list, but you left out that Kery would also have announced the cancelation of the Bush taxcuts.
"AND we also need to educate the American people, so they won't be fooled, when the Dems will start to lie and scare them about it."
I think the Dems are making an enormous political blunder in demagoguing the FairTax and, by default, defending the status quo. When we get the FairTax passed (notice I did not say IF) and the economy takes off like a rocket, Americans are no longer being terrorized by the IRS, those at the low end of the income ladder have more purchasing power and our trade deficit shrinks significantly, the Dems won't be able spin this. Many of their constituents will see that they have been more interested in political power for themselves than in serving the American people. Then we will have another election of significant gains for republicans and the dems will be licking their wounds and wondering what went wrong.
"We cannot keep going into more and more debt without it having major consequences."
That's an excellent point. The FairTax would have a major positive impact on both the trade deficit and the federal budget deficit. The best way to address the federal budget deficit would be to acelerate the rate of economic growth. Contrary to what our friends on the left would have you believe, the major reason that surpluses have turned to large deficits the past several years is NOT because of the tax cuts, but because of the economic downturn. According to Dr Dale Jorgenson, GDP growth in the first year after the FairTax is enacted would be an eye-popping 10.5%, gradually declining each subsequent year until levelling off at a rate that would be less than a full percent higher than the rate of growth if we stayed with the current system. By the time the growth levelled off to that rate, the economy would have grown to 1/4 to 1/3 larger than it would have been under the current system. That has ENORMOUS implications relative to the federal budget and its surpluses or deficits.
"UMMM how? Didn't realize by cutting and abolishing taxes you 'complicated' the tax code."
Well, in fact, any changes work to complicate the mess we have now. If you look at the chart that CCH puts out, the groowth in the system has been virually uninterupted since the inception of the income tax in 1913. In fact, as that graph illustrates, not only is our tax system maintaining an unsustainable rate of growth, but the rate is actually accelerating. That was the case BEFORE the recently enacted corporate tax bill, which I believe was about 800 or so pages, and which the IRS has said they don't have the resources to enforce.
I'm sure that wasn't President Bush's intention, but that is the dilemma we find ourselves in today. Some one with a background in the software industry the other day said that there are times when a software package has been modified so much that the logic literally becomes unintelligible. In those cases, it makes mre sense to throw the system out and start with something new. I thought that was a great analogy to our tax system.
"That is interesting, but I am going to say that I believe strongly in tax simplificaiton. 99.5% of us should be able to figure out our income taxes on one side of one sheet of paper."
An admirable sentiment, but it begs one very basic and fundamental question. Why in the world would you acquiesce to having to disclose to the federal government how much money you make and where that money came from? What right do they have to demand that information - certainly not by any constitutional principle! The founding fathers ruled out this type of tax, the Supreme Court in the late 1800's ruled against it and the congress in 1913 turned its back on those precedents. Are you really siding with the congress of 1913 in their belief that the founding fathers and the Supreme Court had it wrong?
"Whose up for the fight?"
Many Americans have been involved in this fight for some time now. For years, we have heard that this isn't realistic, that it could never happen. We still hear that, but not as often now.
The best way to hook up with other FairTax supporters is to join the Yahoo! chat group in your state. There are 50 of them now. All you have to do is send an e-mail to
XXfairtax-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
where XX is the two digit abbreviation for your state.
I'm with you on that all the way.
mmmmm... the lobbyst establishment would push for loopholes,benefits etc. The best way to prevent this is to create a sacred tax code thats fair for all, so no one dares to mess around with it.
NO INVISIBLE TAXES -- thats a major problem today. Outta sight outta mind. The citizens need to be reminded DAILY as to the amount of tax they actually pay.
That doesn't exist and never will. No piece of legislation is 'sacred'. We can tinker with the code all we want, but it is still just that .. the code. Even if we simplify it, down the road special interests will bloat it again.
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