My proposal wouldn't collect data on American citizens daily either.
Of course, my proposal would restore the federal government to it's intended size, and that puts all the big government folks into a frenzy
And you would be surprised how many people it would take to collect revenue.
Collecting it in say, Kenedy County, Texas, that's one thing. But when you start to get into areas of concentrated population, and multitudes of commercial establishments, it becomes that much more difficult.
And in this whole grand scheme, you forgot one thing. There are going to be enterprises who if they figure out a way to get away with it, will start under-reporting to the tax people. If you don't officially record a sale, don't give a receipt or anything, then how will the government know this sale has occured.
And all this would do would be to allow the federal government to collect even more data on people, maybe not individuals, but certainly groups. They could know who buys what, etc.
And I don't even want to go into the economics of this, cause others have done this for me, but all I will say is this.
The United States runs on a consumer economy, when you raise prices, people will adjust their consumption habits, even if they do pay more. And because no one in this lifetime has ever dealt with a 25% sales tax, seeing one on a bill is going to make them livid, and immediately you will see thrift.
You would see more people planting vegetable gardens, and you would actually see an exodus out into rural areas, just so you can grow some food without having to pay an exorbitant tax on it.
As it stands now, this country is already in a bad financial way, almost everyone buys on credit (and I ain't talking mortgages, I'm talking credit cards)
At any given time, your average American has got several grand in credit card debt. The last thing we ought to be doing is increasing the amount that they will be charging to those damn things, because it was the credit industry that got us into the Great Depression.
Which shows your complete lack of knowledge about where the vast bulk of sales taxes are collected now, and would continue to be collected under the NRST; ie, from large commercial retail enterprises like Walmart, etc.; who would have no interest at all....zero...in avoiding paying the tax.
You've been here for about 10 days. Welcome to FR. Now, take a well deserved vacation from posting and read the bill, the FAQs, and any of the hundreds of threads and tens of thousands of posts explaining all of the things that you raise that are totally irrelevant to this discussion. You are going so far afield of the subject that I'm beginning to think that you are here to disrupt and misinform other readers.
In case I am wrong on that assessment, you will not find any of the supporters of the FairTax who want to cede any more power to the Feds. We, like you, believe that the government is grossly overextended in power and scope.
Just look at this thread as a microcosm of the whole debate on the size of government and the possibility of doing something about it. If we can't agree on even the necessity of EXPOSING the cost of government with a transparent tax like the FairTax, how in world are we going to convince the rest of America that starting next January 1, that 90% of the federal government is going to just go away.
I think that you argued earlier that implementation of this plan would disrupt too many people because the tax collectors and tax practicitioners would be displaced from their jobs. If that's true, what do you think what would happen if 90% of all Federal employees were unemployed and how do you think that America would react to letting that happen?
See, the problem is that most people do not realize that the government doesn't have money trees where they harvest their money. The don't realize that they themselves are paying for the bloated bureaucracies because those costs are hidden from them -- buried in the price of the goods and services OR that someone other than them is paying for their goodies. Why would they care about the size of government if they don't know that they are paying? And for those who only live off the government's teat and just stand with their hand outstretched waiting for more goodies why would they care at all?
Right now, so many people are exempted out of the I.T. system or have gone underground that we will soon be at a tipping point where we will soon be outvoted in any attempt to fix anything. The non-payers will outnumber the payers and they will continue to vote only for those who promise more goodies out of your paycheck.
This may NOT be the perfect plan. It's just light years ahead of anything else that's been proposed and the ONLY plan talked about that has support in congress and massive grassroots support across the country. This IS a great first step in getting back to the position that you and I both want. We didn't get here overnight. We're not going to get back overnight either, but we can turn the train around and start heading back in the right direction with this plan.
Please take some time to do what I asked (and asked not too nicely -- sorry) and read through the plan. Every intellectually honest person that looks at it see that it does more to restore individual liberty than any other tax plan and restores the relationship between a free people and their government. When you're done, please join us in devolving power from the government.
Thanks.