Posted on 11/07/2004 2:07:53 AM PST by FairOpinion
An official says all provisions will be examined by a reform panel. Many experts think Bush will favor a piecemeal approach.
As the White House prepares to name a blue-ribbon panel on tax reform, the labyrinthine U.S. revenue code could face the first top-to-bottom rewrite since President Reagan closed loopholes and slashed income tax rates on a historic scale in 1986.
"This is a fundamental look at the entire code, every component of the code," a senior administration official said late last week. "Nothing is off the table."
"Simplification would be the goal," Bush said Thursday during his first postelection news conference. "The main thing is that it would be viewed as fair … that it wouldn't be complicated."
"They'll be looking at the whole thing with three principles in mind: The fundamental reform should be more fair, more simple and more growth-oriented," the official said. "That's their marching orders."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Scrap the entire income tax code, abolish the IRS.
PING
one can hope... and pester one's congresscritters
I hope this isn't just pretend like so many Republicans in office do......
I believe Bush, but who's going to be on the panel?? Specter?
Is this the secret strategery kicking in? Act like FDR and LBJ in your first term, but act like Reagan in your second. I hope so.
Related article:
Bush poised to wage an economic revolution
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1273377/posts
The only fair tax system is a flat tax. No more loopholes. No more credits. Just list what you made, take 15% of that, and that's your tax.
I'm afraid the IRS is here to stay.
I don't know the solution, but I am
hopeful Bush will prevail.
I'm afraid the IRS is here to stay.
I don't know the solution, but I am
hopeful Bush will prevail.
"All sales taxes are regressive taxes. It only serves to make the middle class pay a higher portion of their wages in taxes than all other groups"
No they are not. You spend less, you pay less taxes. You have a choice, unlike with the income taxes.
A national retail won't happen for the following reasons.
If the mortgage tax deduction is repealed, any 2006 congressional challenger will get a huge issue to use against the incumbent.
If the mortgage deduction is retained, we'll still have pieces of the old income tax system, which is unacceptable to a major block of potential NRST supporters.
To push through a national sales tax, advocates need to repeal the 16th amendment, while simultaneously convincing reluctant Congressmen that imposing a tax of about 20% on almost everything and scrapping the mortgage deduction won't cost them their seats.
It'll never happen.
Kinda off topic......
Fair paper work act???
For who......
Sorry red tape ticks me off to no end.
Quote: "The time for "fairtax" -- retail sales tax, instead of income tax has come."
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I tend to agree, but I can hear it now...
Oh, but thats so "Regressive" (/sob)
The modification of a sales tax which passes the "liberal" test (mostly because it confuses them) is the VAT, where a little bit of tax is added all along the way from raw material to purchased product.
It has some detractors too, because you end up taxing tax in all but the first step of the process. The upside of that is it makes it hard to cheat - buy all your goods thru some bogus business who's only purpose is to get you tax free goods supposidly for "resale".
But either a Vat or a Sales tax does away with the IRS as far as Joe Citizen is concerned.
Businesses have to keep better books, and pay more taxes but they do this all by computer these days and already do it for city and state sales tax. Its not an insurmountable problem.
Sorry about the double post...
a combination of a borrowed laptop and long fingernails. :)
If you make $200,000 and buy only $20,000 in goods, then only 10% of your earnings are taxed. If another guy makes $20,000 and spends $20,000, 100% of his earnings are taxed.
Please oh please tell me how that is NOT regressive.
You spend less, you pay less taxes.
Wonderful way to run the economy into the ground, friend. Give consumers disincentives to make purchases. Which Einstein thought that economic plan up, hm?
And let's not forget the loopholes in which select groups form co-ops and skirt their share of the tax entirely?
Sorry...I ain't buying it. A flat tax on income is the only way to go.
If you pay not tax on your income, there is no point in having a mortgage tax deduction.
People have to change their whole way of thinking.
E.g. someone makes $60,000, with a mortgage interest of $20,000. Now that person pays taxes on $40,000 of their income.
Under the national sales tax, you get the entire $60,000 in hand, pay your $20,000 mortgage and you ONLY Pay taxes on the $40,000, IF you spend it all. Even then you are not paying any more taxes. And if you don't spend the $40K, you are ahead.
They will have to figure out what the appropriate sales tax rate is, but I don't see it as hurting people who own their homes and are paying interest.
They're (IRS) will be fighting tooth and nail to save their jobs. The beast has a life of it's own.
Just to be clear, I support scrapping the income tax.
My post was an analysis of the political landscape relating to such a change, not of the change itself.
My take exactly. Get rid of the IRS, get rid of the income tax and tax only consumption. Its the way to go to make America the world's economic engine in the 21st Century.
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