So where is your proposal for a VAT which eliminates corporate and individual income taxes?If you are looking for a bill number, I don't know of any specific one. So what? You keep trying to make an issue out of the fact that there is a NRST bill in Congress when it doesn't matter. Nobody is going to pick one system over another simply because one happens to have a bill in Congress. To think that would matter in decision as significant as comprehensive tax reform is simplistic to the extreme.
How many other supporters do you have for that approach?I have no idea how many people support a VAT.
Now, now ... have you so soon forgotten that you were corrected on this particular - ahem - "misspoke" back on post #99.
How soon we forget! Maybe we'll someday seeyou posting on FR as to how you supported the FairTax - except for a "misspoke" or three.
Wouldn't that be grand???
"BTW, I would prefer a flat tax which, as is evident by the poll I posted previously, has significant support."
The concept of a flat tax has considerable support. If you measure the support of any of the various flat tax proposals, they are miniscule. Apparently, there is a major problem reducing the concept to a workable level of specificity. After all, it isn't like the flat tax is a new arrival on the tax reform scene, is it?
"Nobody is going to pick one system over another simply because one happens to have a bill in Congress."
You keep missing the point, so let me splain it to ya (as we say in the south).
The flat tax has been around a LONG, LONG time. Many flat tax bills have been introduced, many have died and none .... ZERO ..... have ever gained any real political traction. Democrats will never support one. The tough part of developing a plan is NOT, I repeat NOT, deciding which form you want to use. The tough part is to make all the trade-offs that are necessary to develop a real fleshed out proposal with all the particulars as to base, rate, etc. You attack the particulars of the FairTax and , in so doing, insinuate that some flat taxer (or VAT taxer) could to a better job of making those judgements.
That being the case, the burden of proof is on you to back that up with something other than empty rhetoric.
I find it very interesting that Mr. Burgess found it necessary to shift his flat tax bill to an option. I am pretty sure that the Armey bill was a replacement, not an option. Kind of makes you wonder why Mr. Burgess found it necessary to basically abandon the idea of simplification and introduce a proposal that isn't even revenue neutral. For that reason alone, that proposal isn't going to receive serious consideration.
The more serious concern, of course, is over progressivity. The flat taxers basically pooh-poohed that whole notion. That stakes out their territory as being far out of the mainstream.