The entire nation's financial planning (both business and personal) has been based on the current taxation structure. Such a radical shift can't possibly avoid being severely disruptive to those plans.
Absolutely, I certainly hope so:
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/jorgenson/papers/baker.pdf
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Revised April 12, 1999. This paper was prepared for presentation at the page 21: We have simulated the impact of implementing two different versions of a consumption tax at the beginning of 1996. The first is the Armey-Shelby Flat Tax. The Armey-Shelby proposal levies taxes on the difference between business receipts and the sum of business purchases and business payrolls. Labor income is taxed at the individual level. An important feature of the proposal is the system of personal exemptions at the individual level that we have described. The second proposal we have considered is the National Retail Sales Tax. The tax base is the same as in our simulations of the Flat Tax. However, the method of tax collection is different. The Arrney-Shelby Flat Tax preserves the existing structures of the corporate and individual income taxes, but alters the tax base. The National Retail Sales Tax eliminates corporate and individual income taxes; retail establishments would collect the taxes. This would require a broad definition of these establishments to include real estate developers and providers of services, such as medical, legal, and personal services. Most important, no personal exemptions are provided. PDF page 25-27: 5. Figure 7 compares the impact of the two tax reform proposals on investment. The impact of the Flat Tax in 1996 is to depress investment by 8.6 percent, relative to the Base Case. Investment recovers over time, eventually reaching a level that is only 1.7 percent below the Base Case in the year 2020. Substitution of the Sales Tax for existing income taxes generates a dramatic investment boom. The impact in 1996 is a whopping 78.5 percent increase in the level of investment that gradually gives way by the year 2000 to a substantial increase of 16.5 percent, relative to the Base Case. 6. Figure 8 compares the impacts of the tax reforms on exports, while Figure 9 compares the impacts on imports. It is important to keep in mind that net foreign investment, the difference between exports and imports in nominal terms, is exogenous in our simulations, while the exchange rate is endogenous. The Flat Tax results in a very modest decline in exports of 0.5 percent in 1996, relative to the Base Case, but exports recover rapidly and exceed Base Case levels in 1997, rising eventually to 4.6 percent above these levels in 2020. Imports initially rise by 2.0 percent, relative to the Base Case, in 1996, but this impact declines to only 0.3 percent by 2020. The Sales Tax generates a substantial export boom; the level jumps to 29.2 percent about the Base Case level in 1996, but declines by 2020, reaching 18.9 percent of this level. Imports in 1996 exceed the Base Case level by 2.5 percent, but fall to 1.3 percent below this level in 2020. 7. The inter-temporal price system provides the mechanism for re-allocations of resources in our simulations. Figures 10 and 11 give the impacts of the tax reforms on the prices of investment goods and consumption goods and services. Under the Flat Tax the price of investment goods drops by more that 6.8 per cent in 1996 and the price decline continues, falling only modestly to a little over six percent by 2020. The Sales Tax produces a reduction in investment goods prices exceeding twenty percent in 1996, rising gradually to between twenty-five and thirty percent over the period 2000-2020. 8. The implied subsidy to leisure time is equal to the marginal tax rate on labor income and would drop to zero when the individual income tax is abolished. Individuals sharply curtail consumption of both goods and leisure under the Sales Tax. Figure 12 shows that labor supply (and demand) jumps initially by thirty percent in 1996. This labor supply response recedes to a level of around fifeen percent by 2020. By contrast the Flat Tax generates an increase in both consumption and labor supply. The labor supply response is only two percent in 1996, but gradually rises to more than five percent by 2020. 9. Since producers would no longer pay taxes on profits or other forms of income from capital and workers would would no longer pay taxes on wages, prices received by producers under the Sales Tax, shown in Figure 13, would fall by an average of twenty percent in 1996. Figure 14 shows that prices received by producers would fall by an average of twenty-five percent by 2020. The impact of the Flat Tax on prices received by producers is much less dramatic. Prices decline in the range of six to eight percent for most industries in 1996 and five to seven percent by 2020. |
So you openly admit to a desire to severely disrupt and destabilize our entire economy???
Idiot.