Posted on 05/12/2005 7:46:54 PM PDT by Your Nightmare
Members of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform on May 11 expressed concerns over the FairTax national retail sales tax, a plan that has emerged as an alternative with a major grass-roots push.
Panel chair Connie Mack, vice chair John B. Breaux, and other members worried the plan would be difficult to enforce, would be regressive, and would require a high rate in order to take in enough money to fund the government.
Breaux raised concerns that the proposed 23 percent (tax-inclusive) rate would not be sufficient to raise the revenue necessary to fund the government. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that it would take as much as a 57 percent (tax-exclusive) rate to be revenue-neutral. Further, Breaux said he thought exemptions that would be carved out to make the sales tax progressive would also complicate it.
Mack, who raised concerns similar to his fellow panelists', said he was "intrigued" by the plan. "But if it's such a great idea, why haven't other political entities around the world pursued it?" he asked.
Americans for Fair Taxation Executive Director Tom Wright emphasized that the plan emerged after "thorough academic research" and "thorough polling" The strong grass-roots push has resulted in some of the group's 600,000 members appearing at each of the panel's hearings and has inspired a large comment-writing campaign to the panel in support of the plan.
Sales tax advocates were among the 20 witnesses who gathered before the panel for a full day of testimony on tax reform proposals. Although the group has held several other hearings in Washington and around the country, the May 11 meeting was its first hearing on specific reform plans since Bush appointed the panel in January. The panel has been charged with identifying tax reform proposals that are progressive, encourage charitable giving and home purchases, and are revenue-neutral. The proposals are due by July 31.
Among the tax replacement and reform plans presented to the panel were the value added tax, consumption-based tax, and the flat tax, as well as proposals that would use the current income tax as the foundation.
Witnesses generally claimed that theirs was the fairest, simplest, most flexible, most transparent revenue-neutral proposal that would improve economic growth and savings while meeting the president's criteria of encouraging charitable giving and home buying. Witnesses presenting consumption-based plans praised their overhaul as taking millions of low-income taxpayers off the rolls, being easy to transition to on a worldwide basis, and including safeguards to prevent new loopholes that would result in increased complexity down the road.
Tax reform panel members, who agree the current tax system needs to be fixed, grilled witnesses without revealing whether they will ultimately endorse a consumption- or income-based tax or a different mixture of the two.
In your case, Nos. 4 and 6 apply, and I suspect you of No. 3 as well, but I'm too lazy to prove it, and it just isn't worth the effort. Besides, FR has a TOS about stalking people around the Web just to document their ad homs.
FR also has an abuse button, use it.
Been here since '98, still here inspite of all the protests of those who figure facts can be shut out by mere assertion without substance.
Highly relevant. Big difference. You're dissembling again. And spamming again.
Either case the business acts in proxy for the customer base regardless.
Not true, if the market won't allow the business to pass through its tax liability and requires it to pay out taxes from its margins.
Not true. In case the company collects the tax from someone else, it isn't collecting it from me.
No way do I let companies off the hook.
Sorry. Your onus to prove the benefit, and you haven't done it.
And yes, I am the judge. I'm the audience, the voter, the constituent. YOU have to sell ME. You haven't done it. I have spoken. Scripsi, scripsi.
Oh, and you're really changing my mind, with ridicule and spamming stupid-looking pictures. Did you ever attend a Dale Carnegie course? You must have been born a rich only child or something. Your PR sucks.
Okay, done deal. Admin, we got a guy here spamming JR's bandwidth with iterative posts of objects, links, etc. that he has posted before. Boy's a stone waste of bandwidth. Might have a look.
Been here since '98, still here inspite of all the protests of those who figure facts can be shut out by mere assertion without substance.
"Assertion without substance" is what you call everyone else's posts. "Facts" are what you call your own arguments, which are in fact pleas for changes in the law to suit yourself.
I think that this is a benefit rather than a problem with FairTax, it would clearly show the level of the tax burden. While we argue about the merits of the different tax systems we loose sight of the fact that the real problem is the level of government spending. I will support any of the currently discussed tax plans if federal spending were cut to 10% of the GDP; at 60% no tax plan will be just.
The fair tax is the way to go. As it is presented, 23% is revenue neutral. This panel hasn't read enough on the subject.
Irrelavent as one does pay those taxes today through
all companies[companies one does actual business with, and no others] and indirectly their suppliers today from which they do purchase goods or services.
Highly relevant. Big difference.
Let see, because you only buy groceries from one grocery store and no others, no taxes are extracted from your purchases of groceries to be remitted to government by that business who includes not only the tax costs of his own business but the tax costs of his suppliers through his purchases of goods & service to be incorporated into his sales to you.
Hmmm, yep wonderful, perhaps you can tell us all how you get a different price from all other customers of that business such that you finance no tax remittances by the business you purchase from and the rest of us do.
You're dissembling again. And spamming again.
You do have a way of repeating yourself. Unfortunately that which is false remains false no matter how many times you may repeat it.
Either case the business acts in proxy for the customer base regardless.
Not true, if the market won't allow the business to pass through its tax liability and requires it to pay out taxes from its margins.
Lets see for a healthy business Price of products sold = costs on business plus margins = tax paid plus business inputs plus wages paid.
Sorry busness income and payroll taxes are paid out of total sales revenue received, nowhere else for them to come from and keep a business solvent. Customer sales provide that revenue to the business from which all income and payroll taxes are paid or the business must ultimately cease to exist do to bankruptcy.
As it is presented, 23% is revenue neutral. This panel hasn't read enough on the subject.OH, OK...So don't tell me, I'm not the one you need to influence. You need to tell them.
I am the one who supports a National Retail Sale Tax that collects the tax dollars from me as a customer out right and in the open. Remember? Only person paying taxes, ever, is the individual citizen.
Not true. In case the company collects the tax from someone else, it isn't collecting it from me.
No way do I let companies off the hook.
You have no way to put the company on the hook in the first place. Every time you purchase anything at all for your own use, rather than resale to someone else passing on the cost of your purchases you finance the taxes on that company.
Sorry. Your onus to prove the benefit, and you haven't done it.
You are the one claiming a benefit out of business somehow paying taxes not I. Apparently you believe business has a magic tree from which it grabs tax dollars to remit to government, or a source other than the dollars you provide in your purchases of their goods and services that you have failed to identify.
I claim there is a tax cost to you embedded in the prices you pay for anything you purchase for final consumption in the retail market. That my friend is not a benefit, it is a cost you bear under any tax system that requires businesses to remit income and payroll taxes. You buy a product, you finance the taxes paid with regard to the businesses that produce that product for your consumption.
I claim no benefit to you at all, nor to myself. Government collected taxes through businesses are financed our of our purchases of the product sales provided by business. You pay for a product for your own consumption, you are financing the income and payroll taxes of the producers of that product.
An NRST implemented under the FairTax plan removes no tax burden on the nation for it is a revenue neutral tax reform policy as mandated by the president's stated requirements for reform proposals to the tax reform commission.
The NRST implemented does however assure that all citizens are provided notice of the tax burden they actually bear. From such knowledge, an electorate may exercise that "Eternal Vigilance" and informed voting duty that is necessary for proper function of a representative republic.
The benefit to the nation under that NRST, is in the increase in accountability of governing representatives to the American electorate/ Benefit to the individual, release from the legal jeopardy of pervasive monitoring, audit, and adversarial process under the federal infra-structure that inheren to the administration and enforcement of federal taxes on income.
And yes, I am the judge. I'm the audience, the voter, the constituent.
“No one should be judge in his own case. ”
-- Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)
YOU have to sell ME. You haven't done it. I have spoken. Scripsi, scripsi.
No their you have it wrong, I merely need to provide a sufficient explaination to convince an that proportion of the electorate to effect the necessary change.
You as an individual are merely that, one out of many who read these threads and judge for themselves the merits of the positions presented.
Oh, and you're really changing my mind, with ridicule and spamming stupid-looking pictures. Did you ever attend a Dale Carnegie course? You must have been born a rich only child or something. Your PR sucks.
Your mind was closed from the beginning, I do not resond to appease you as much as to engage your debate as a springboard from which to present the NRST argument to those open to tax reform and the need for it. I educate the educatable, not those with minds closed to reality and change.
Sorry, but if that were true you wouldn't be working so hard to make a sale. Ergo, it's a bad deal for me.
Sorry, no sale on paying your tax bill for you.
Okay, done deal. Admin, we got a guy here spamming JR's bandwidth with iterative posts of objects, links, etc. that he has posted before. Boy's a stone waste of bandwidth. Might have a look.
Yes Indeed, it may be worth a look through the whole thread. There is much to be learned here.
"Assertion without substance" is what you call everyone else's posts. "Facts" are what you call your own arguments,
Don't see a single substantiation for your assertions anywhere in this thread. Merely your statment and nothing more. That is assertion withut substance, and tooting your own horn.
which are in fact pleas for changes in the law to suit yourself.
All arguments are pleas for change to suit one's own views regarding a topic. Indeed that is all debate ever is. The key lay in does one remain totally inside one's own head and self assertion or does one demonstrate a body of knowledge, philosophy and logic outside ones personal assumptions that demonstrate independant basis and foundation outside the confines of ones own mis and pre-conseptions.
Thus far all you present is that which is a product of your own imagination with no foundational support whatsoever. One speaking ex-cathedra should at least have a credible claim to deity.
Every time they sign a tax check, I don't have to. That is self-evident. You are claiming that I paid those taxes. You are, of course, wrong.
I claim there is a tax cost to you embedded in the prices you pay for anything you purchase for final consumption in the retail market.
So what? That is in no way comparable to the destruction to be wrought on my ability to support myself, of assuming business's tax burden de jure.
You pay for a product for your own consumption, you are financing the income and payroll taxes of the producers of that product.
Except for those taxes paid for by other people, including those not living in the United States.
Businesses just want the tax onus taken off them so they can offer other customers overseas more competitive prices -- and I have to pay ALL the tax burden previously shared by all those companies' customers, not just the little part imputable to my purchase.
This is a hustle, and you know it. That's why you're fighting so hard. You're playing three-card monte with the lurkers, and if they fall for your line, they're screwed.
I claim no benefit to you at all, nor to myself.
Inscribed over the gates to Con Man Hell, as a reminder of their sins in life.
“No one should be judge in his own case. ”
Take your own advice.
I educate the educatable, not those with minds closed to reality and change.
"There's a sucker born every minute." -- P.T. Barnum.
I wish you bad luck with your con, dude. Hope nobody else is taken in by your rattling the tin cup for millionaires.
I am interrogating your discourse. No need to quote the Federalist or Publilius Syrus to do that.
Yours to persuade, mine to question. And I don't need to "qualify" with you, to put a question or an argument. Yours is the argument requiring support, since you are demanding we change the entire basis of collecting taxes, which will likely produce huge winners (your side) and big losers (any suckers who listen to you long enough to let you guys screw them).
You propose. We decide. Don't need a PhD. or documents, to do that.
You are the one claiming a benefit out of business somehow paying taxes not I.
Every time they sign a tax check, I don't have to. That is self-evident.
Not a thing self evident in that at all. Self delusion maybe, but not self-evident as you bought their product, what is in their remittence to government includes a portion of your payment to them contributing in the same proportion as every other purchaser of that business' products to the business' remittences to government.
You are claiming that I paid those taxes. You are, of course, wrong.
You buy the product, you pay a proportionate share of the taxes remitted in proportion to your expenditures for goods and services. Some folk even manage to purchase beyound their income through credit, and pay an even higher burden in taxes relative to their incomes.
I claim there is a tax cost to you embedded in the prices you pay for anything you purchase for final consumption in the retail market.
So what? That is in no way comparable to the destruction to be wrought on my ability to support myself, of assuming business's tax burden de jure.
Thanks for conceding the point you were denying before. See even you ultimately start recognizing reality when is no longer escapable.
You support your side of taxes directly through individual income an payroll taxes, then finance the taxes business remit as well right now. Just because you don't see a line item detailing the taxes you have financed certainly does not reduce the fact that you are indeed a customer and a source of the funds that are remitted as taxes by business to government.
I see your burden "de-jure" and raise you a burden de facto.
You pay for a product for your own consumption, you are financing the income and payroll taxes of the producers of that product.
Except for those taxes paid for by other people, including those not living in the United States.
All citizens end up paying taxes some as individual tax payers and all in their roll of consumers through purchases from business' that remit taxes to the United States.
Businesses just want the tax onus taken off them so they can offer other customers overseas more competitive prices -- and I have to pay ALL the tax burden previously shared by all those companies' customers, not just the little part imputable to my purchase.
You are really hung up on busineses aren't you.
You are overlooking the fact that foreign visitors are required to pay the same implicit taxes through their purchases in the United States as well. Anyone citizen or otherwise purchasing U.S. products end up paying US taxes through U.S. business tax remittance. The FairTax NRST is charged against purchases by all foreign visitors and non-citizens purchasing goods and serviced for final consumption in the US are taxed in like manner as citizens of the U.S..
Business merely pass on tax to government from all sources, including you.
This is a hustle, and you know it. That's why you're fighting so hard. You're playing three-card monte with the lurkers, and if they fall for your line, they're screwed.
Once again foundationless assertion about a revenue neutral tax policy. Revenue neutral with the current income/payroll tax law we are required to pay today.
I claim no benefit to you at all, nor to myself.
Inscribed over the gates to Con Man Hell, as a reminder of their sins in life.
Ahh, but the only con man here is the one who claims that business remitting taxes financed by you that you have no measure on is a benefit to you.
It would appear you object to being informed of what your real tax burden is, or is it that you would rather others not be aware of the true cost of government in their lives.
“No one should be judge in his own case. ”
Take your own advice.
I do, I leave it to the reader to judge the respective arguments of the case for keeping an income tax system where as much as half of ones burden or more that is laid by government is behind the corporate veil where it cannot be perceived for the cost on the citizen it is.
To remove perception of the tax burdens of the individual, is to remove the goad which assures accountability of government to the electorate. Federal tax rates are high and government grows ever larger because a majority of the electorate do not perceive proportionately the burden their demand for largesse imposes on the minority of citizens.
The siren call for representation without taxation is the formula that got us where we are at today. The ability to hide or disguise taxation from the view of large sectors of the electorate allows the Congress to get away with the creation of the evergrowing monster that it fosters.
I educate the educatable, not those with minds closed to reality and change.
"There's a sucker born every minute." -- P.T. Barnum.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-George Bernard Shaw
Liberty and freedom have a price, responsibility. If the perception of burden laid by government is interfered with or avoided there are no brakes on the growth of government, the ultimate result is the end of freedom through creeping socialism.
I wish you bad luck with your con, dude. Hope nobody else is taken in by your rattling the tin cup for millionaires.
Oh my such bitterness in that statement. Just a least bit of class envy to be found I note.
Sorry, whatever a millionaire does is of little worry to me, he spends more than me and by that fact alone he will contribute proportionately to the nation's government more effectively under an NRST than any proposed mechanism of taxation of income does today.
I am more concerned to see the end of the taxation of income; a tax system which I and others find to be inherently devisive, manipulative, and reprehensible in a nation that would claim to be founded on the principles of protecting Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Though I do admit to a little bias on the part of rich bachelors.
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
--Oscar Wilde
I am interrogating your discourse. No need to quote the Federalist or Publilius Syrus to do that.
Nor need for belief or basis in fact in what you state for that matter, throw supp'n on the wall and see if you can get it to stick doesn't require one to think critically of their own position.
Yours to persuade, mine to question.
Seeing as I have no interest in persuasion of you. It isn't even your's to question, just another poor assumption on your part.
Yours is the argument requiring support, since you are demanding we change the entire basis of collecting taxes
I demand nothing of you at all. You may continue supporting the status quo or any kind of income tax system you like. You prefer to continue the income tax system for the economic advantage you perceive in maintaining that kind system.
I abhore the income tax system and seek to end their use on philosophical and moral grounds. Simple as that.
Obviously we will never be in agreement, or pardigms are far to wide apart.
Sorry, but if that were true you wouldn't be working so hard to make a sale. Ergo, it's a bad deal for me.
Of course the alternative interpretation is that I see the current system to be an ultimate bad deal for both of us.
Your measures of that obviously being different from mine you look to sustain the income tax in any from you can perceive as beneficial to you.
Sorry, no sale on paying your tax bill for you.
Only I can pay my tax bill, only you can pay yours.
Whether it is directly from by writing a check to government, or indirectly by handing over one's aquired dollars to another and finance the payment an indirect tax does not change the relationship of taxation at all.
People pay taxes, businesses merely collect and remit taxes from people.
Obviously, from your claimd you are not a business, therefore I must assume you are a people. Under the current system people finance the government from both ends of the deal. The difference between you and I is that I recognize the roll of business in extracting revenues for growing government on the back of the citizen and at the expense of individual liberty, privacy and property, and apparently you wish to deny such a roll for business exists.
You are happy in ignorance of the payment of tax dollars you finance and have no concern of the philosophical or moral impact of the tax system we live undre. That is good for your psyche I guess, denial is simply not my bag however.
You propose. We decide. Don't need a PhD. or documents, to do that.
I see, don't confuse you with facts or information or philosophy or moral argument.
That just gets in the way of pre-conceived notions and foundationless beliefs.
“Truth, Sir, is a cow, which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.”
--Samuel Johnson
I had to click on somebody's post to make my reply.
I'm honored...Reply to what/who?
Reply to the issue.
You get your entire paycheck, minus your voluntary deductions for retirement, etc., and by the time the embedded taxes are removed from retail products, the prices of consumer goods returns to basically what they were before the sales tax. It's a win-win situation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.