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.
Therefore, the overall compliance cost surcharge alone amounts to nearly 20.4 cents for every $1 collected by the federal income tax.Twenty cents on the dollar. So the rest of your supposed "compliance costs" add up to $0.80 on the dollar? Sure, whatever.
Taken altogether, the true tax burden impressed upon us all through higher prices and loss of productivity exceeds the mere revenue collected by the govenment by substantially more even than the $593 billion estimate of James Payne in 1995:Payne's numbers are based on the Arthur D. Little study done in 1982! So it's a little outdated. And it was flawed then. One of it's many flaws is it based the amount of time required to fill out a form (which, BTW, are done on computers these days) on the number of number of words in the description, amoung other things. The ADL study is a joke and Payne exposes himself as someone not to be taken seriously by using this "data."
At present, this burden is estimated at $700 billion annually.Estimated by who using what method? Was the method as dodgy as Payne's?
Christian says the true burden on the U.S. economy is probably closer to $1 trillion.That's economic loss, not compliance costs. Jeez.
That is actually the amount of time wasted on debating these idiots.
What bank would loan a person an extra $60,000 for tax on a $200,000 home? What is the collateral for the $60k?
Only reason for collateral is to cover risk against default on the loan. That portion that represents unpaid but due taxes in default are well covered.
H.R.25Fair Tax Act of 2005 (Introduced in House)
`SEC. 205. BAD DEBT CREDIT.`(a) Financial Intermediation Services- Any person who has experienced a bad debt (other than unpaid invoices within the meaning of subsection (b)) shall be entitled to a credit equal to the product of--
`SEC. 802. BAD DEBTS.
|
Why would you not want to answer?
Certainly wages are very difficult to change en masse, However the second part, "for "purchasing power" to remain constant" is a restriction that simple cannot be held true. Purchasing power, is also a function of productivity, more or the same amount of goods produced at lower cost, is not a situation where purchasing power remains constant for fixed or climbing wages. Under such conditions purchasing power climb even as nominal wages remain constant. With relief of tax relate burdens on producers, as a consequence of repeal of business income and payroll tax system, overhead costs fall, producer prices fall under market competition leveraging those cost reductions and overall consumer purchasing power increases as result of increasingly more efficient production of goods and services.So my purchasing power will incease under the FairTax (see, I told you, CG). What to guess at how much?
What are you doing? Are you searching all of my posts to look for things to comment on to the exclusion of those you have no answers for. You are a joke.
An FCA now becomes a BIG later when the rates will be tinkered with. A NRST will never be progressive enough for the weak, stupid, the X'ers, the lame, and the liberal (X'ers). They will want "their" money. They will have the vehicle to get it by way of the FCA (BIG).
No, it hasn't! Not once! If you would provide a link to it, I'd be happy. You could also just tell me.
Why wouldn't you share this important information?
Trying to get out of answering?Answering what? You claimed I "told [you] that the embedded taxes that [you] claim are in prices are also in wages" and offer Post #326 as proof. The only problem is Post #326 wasn't addressed to you! I never "told [you] that the embedded taxes that [you] claim are in prices are also in wages," I told Squeally (aka, pigdog).
No, it hasn't! Not once!How about payroll and personal income taxes.
"No one who is in favor of FT can explain how putting such a burden on real estate and mortgages would have any result except collapse. This plan is a disaster waiting to happen."
The beneficial aspects of the FairTax as it relates to home ownership have been explained many times on FR over the years. If you missed them, just go to www.fairtax.org
Because it isn't addressed to me, the information is not valid? How interesting and predictable.
"Human capital formation would collapse under a Fair Tax scheme. Can you imagine having to borrow ANOTHER 30% to pay for college? At 30 grand a year this would be another 10 and further lengthen the payback for loans."
The FairTax does NOT tax education expenses. Because of that, education expenditures are made with PRE-TAX dollars, which is a huge advantage over the current system.
All you guardians of the status quo should get together and get your paranoias in alignment.
You are exactly right. The question shouldn't even be taxation. The Feds need to control the throwaway of our money.
First you count all payroll taxes as being costs to the employee. Your plan would give the employee most of this money in his pocket. Then your hired gun economists tell us all taxes are embedded in the cost of goods, this includes the payroll tax that you already accounted for as being paid by the employee. You can't have it both ways. If the employee is counted as paying his taxes and gets to keep that money, then much of the so-called embedded costs will still be in the costs and prices will not come down nearly as much as your paid for whores say they will. If you assume all taxes are embedded (which is the only way you can claim a 20-30% embedded costs), then you can not simitaneously tell us that employees get to keep all most of their payroll taxes. Employees must take a pay cut or their model is bogus.
The farttax is a folly and that will be the legacy of your efforts.
Certainly hope so as income tax is much worse a folly that you would apparently have us remain under the sway of:
| "As a matter of fact, what the income tax does — and this is the debate that I think we always try to get into in order to let you and him fight, see — and the people of this country are led down a path where the actual control of their resources, which in the end is the control over their will, is handed off to the government." . . . "The government then manipulates that will in order to destroy the freedom of our electoral system through the income tax structure, and we call the resulting slavery a free system." "In point of fact, it is not as the founders understood, and the only way to restore real freedom is to give people back control over the income that they earn so that they won‘t, at the voting booth and in other phony issues, be subject to that manipulation." |
| I discussed the importance of abolishing the income tax because of its tendency to form a habit of servility in the souls of a people that accepts it. Servility of soul is bad not only in itself, it is also an open door through which will soon walk the abuses of ambitious government power. Leaders who find themselves with governmental power over a servile people will be quick to conclude that such a people exist to serve them. |
There was good reason why Karl Marx and the Communist Party makes the progressive/graduated income tax the 2nd plank of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, published in 1848. We should never forget nor overlook the philosophical underpinnings of that choice:
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state ... . Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property ... . These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. "
As for payroll taxes, there are two parts. ONe part is incident on employee, the other in prices.
So again, which taxes are in both prices and wages?
You told pigdog that "The majority of the "embedded taxes" you claim are in prices are also "embedded" in wages. "
Well, which one(s)?
No I don't. When did you start thinking that?!
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