Posted on 08/03/2005 4:51:43 PM PDT by RobFromGa
A simple question...
So, under the FairTaxI get to keep my whole paycheck, prices for everything I will buy will stay the same even with the taxes included, and I get a prebate check from the govt every month. And businesses pay no taxes.
Where is the extra money coming from...
What is wrong with this reasoning below?
1. Right now the government collects $X in the form of all taxes.
2. All taxes are really paid for by consumers in the end result, either directly, or in the cost of their purchases which allow businesses to collect money in order to pay taxes. Companies do not really pay taxes they jsut collect them and pass them on.
3. The FairTax will collect the same $X per year in the form of taxes but using a different method.
4. Under the FairTax, the price paid for goods will not rise because getting rid of all the taxes built into goods will cause the prices to drop, then the FairTax will add onto the new lower price, resulting in the same price paid by consumers.
5. So, for a given taxpayer, shopping (consumption) will be revenue neutral. Ie. Prices are the same as before.
6. And each given taxpayer will get a "prebate" check every month that they are not getting now.
7. And each taxpayer will pay no taxes on capital gains, or on savings.
8. And, each taxpayer will no longer pay any taxes on income, or payroll taxes.
9. And, there will be no Fair Taxes on any purchases made for a business.
Are these all true so far?
Again, I get to keep my whole paycheck, prices for everything I will buy will stay the same even with the taxes included, and I get a prebate check from the govt every month.
Where is the extra money coming from???
No paperwork there right? Filling out sales tax rebate forms for ten or fifteen states per month to get back the NRST? You've got to be kidding me.
It sounds like you guys need to iron out the details and then we can figure it out, ancient_geezer says that the tax won't be collected at point of purchase by showing a card, Ditto says I pay the tax, phil_will1 says I pay the tax then fill out a bunch of forms to each state to get my money back a month later.
SOunds like a nightmare. and a lot of compliance costs.
What else would you have us do? There is the fair tax website that is loaded with information, faq's, rebuttals, sources. There is a new book out about it. Boortz and Linder are making appearances everywhere they can. There's a rally in Cobb County this Friday with Boortz and Linder. HR 25 is posted all over the web and finally there is FreeRepublic where the pro's and cons are aired out daily. Who said the public should accept this on faith? If AFT had that attitude why would it have spent so much on research and promotion?
Big Brother lives. I can imagine the minimum wage auditor possed off that these fatcats are whooping it up every night at expensive restaraunts, and staying in all these exotic locations, I'll show them a thing or too.
Can you see that the compliance costs for business are not going away under NRST?
I never said I was. But then I haven't seen any economists on this thread - just a lot of people with axes to grind.
I at least showed how I came up with my numbers in posts 32, 95, 147, 158 and 211 and admitted their shortcomings and assumptions. Those who say that removing embedded costs of the current tax system will match the sales tax rate giving a net zero change in overall prices haven't. They just say "embedded costs are 23%" or "embedded costs are between 20 and 30%".
I calculated a reasonable first estimate of direct embedded costs at about 9% and said that I have no idea how compliance costs could make up the rest.
I think the most likely result will be that prices are 10-15% higher after the Fair Tax is implemented. Items made up of significant foreign components will go up more because they have less domestic taxes built in. Oil is at the top of that list.
I would like to see the Fair Tax implemented even with the increase in retail prices. The claim of an embedded tax currently around 25% just doesn't pass the smell test and no one has convinced me otherwise.
I apologize for a response I made about you earlier about you yanking our chain. It has happened before that someone starts a thread like they are really interested in the Fair Tax when all along they are just an anti-FT troll.
That is because 50% of the population DOES NOT PAY ANY INCOME TAX at all.
You appear reasonable and willing to discuss these questions. I have looked at the website and read the book and the questions are not answered that I am asking.
Re: business expenses, I am getting three totally different answers and which one is right matters to me. There are answers to all of these questions, the big question is whether the plan will remain workable once acceptable answers to these logistic questions are found.
As a simple example, if there are still going to be massive compliance costs associated with the NRST as my previous posts describem, then where are the compliance cost savings coming from.
Payroll is a fairly simple computerized matter that stays pretty constant month to month, business and travel expenses change every single day and are very labor intensive if you are going to continue to require a huge paper trail.
You can send an email to your congressmen for free at
http://capwiz.com/sicminc/issues/alert/?alertid=7829836&type=CO Click on "elected officials"
I'll run a business of having people pay me a small amount of money to talk about politics. Then they'll have to pay me a larger amount of money to shut up. :-).
OK, the author of the Fair Tax already thought about that tax dodge.
No paperwork there right?
If your a business, you file paperwork for re-imbusment of any sales tax collected from you same as is done in most state retail sales tax jurisdictions now.
The individual consumer has no such paperwork same as state retail sales taxes are administered today. The same entitites dealing with retail sales taxes today under states will be doing so under state administrators for the FairTax federal retail sale tax.
Filling out sales tax rebate forms for ten or fifteen states per month to get back the NRST?
You are actually only required to submit your paperwork with your own state administrator for credit of the "federal" retail sales tax. The justification of accounting for tax credits among states occures at the federal level when the states pass collections onto the U.S. Treasury.
SOunds like a nightmare. and a lot of compliance costs.
Where are they more than with state retail sales taxes, on top of federal income taxes, on top of employers SS/Medicare taxes? Removing the income and payroll taxes from 115million tax return filers today and reducing that to business sales tax filers dealing with their own state only for federal credits on business tax purchases made looks to me to provide a better than 90% improvement of conditions that exist under the current federal tax system.
Not too far back in this thread you said that I would show a card and they wouldn't collect the NRST at the point of purchase, now you are saying I have to list all the items and send them to my state and ask for the money back?
Which is it? I pull up the Motel 6 after a long day on the road, do I pay the NRST with my bill or not?
The references to the Berlin Wall, etc were meant to show that things we think are not possible sometimes happen. I never thought in my lifetime that the Soviet Union would fall. I meant we should fight for something even if we think if may never happen, cause it just might!
I looked at your link to table 2. it is good information, do you know where the personal expenditures line came from? Are we sure that "business expenses" are not in that line, only personal expenditures? Travel costs, marketing/printing costs, etc.
If you are talking about line 1 in table 2 at the bottom, out to the right it says that it comes from NIPA Table 1.2.5 line 2. This is a government report which I think can be found here http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn1.htm I would think that since it say "personal expenditures" that it would mean "personal", not business.
Oh, you didn't have to say that about me! I'm blushing.
Keep trying, YN. Someday someone might believe your convoluted logic. I mean besides AR and LL. Oh, and devil666
If you're not paying tax, the burden of showing the motel acted correctly in not taxing you would be on the motel (unless you were using a bogus tax exemption). Those sorts of things are often handled by state sales tax offices now,
My bet on the paying tax/not paying tax in this sort of example would be to agree with ancient_geezer as the best solution and the most in harmony with the FairTax concept. I think that this wording from the bill certainly seems to cover the situation:
`In all disputes concerning taxes imposed by this subtitle, the person engaged in a dispute with the sales tax administering authority or the Secretary, as the case may be, shall have the burden of production of documents and records but the sales tax administering authority or the Secretary shall have the burden of persuasion. In all disputes concerning an exemption claimed by a purchaser, if the seller has on file an intermediate sale or export sale certificate from the purchaser and did not have reasonable cause to believe that the certificate was improperly provided by the purchaser with respect to such purchase (within the meaning of section 103), then the burden of production of documents and records relating to that exemption shall rest with the purchaser and not with the seller."`SEC. 506. BURDEN OF PERSUASION AND BURDEN OF PRODUCTION.
To me, that seems to be saying a resale certification ticket and of course there are both civil and criminal penalties for bogus activity in this regard. I would think that eventually there would even be a common form used among all states.
BTW, keep in mind my earlier caution to you about Nightie as I see he's trying to direct you to a hitpiece by the liberal left opposing dynamic models (which the FairTax opponents violently oppose since the FairTax has obvious benefits under dynamic analysis). I'd even be careful in trying to understand the very complex economic model mentioned by Jorgenson & Wilcoxen since these are easily misunderstood (and in fact Nightie has put out some incorrect analysis of this very model in past threads).
File is here if anyone is interested, page 10 of the PDF down near the bottom. I would expect that it has purchases made for businesses as well in these numbers because how would they be able to remove them, they don't have the detail to do so.
So, I don't know what percentage of GDP is "business expenses" but if they aren't going to collect NRST on these purchases they need to be removed from the NRST tax base, and the NRST estimated percentage for neutral revenue needs to be raised some amount to compensate for this loss of revenue.
http://www.bea.gov/bea/ARTICLES/2004/01January/0104SelectedNIPATbls.pdf
No, show them your sales tax exemption and see post #436.
I think you'd benefit a lot by reading at least some of the bill itself. It would help give you a better understandiing sooner. You'd be able to satisly some of your points much more quickly.
Not too far back in this thread you said that I would show a card and they wouldn't collect the NRST at the point of purchase, now you are saying I have to list all the items and send them to my state and ask for the money back?
No in genereal, the seller claims the credit so he does not have to pay sales tax for your purchase.
Furthermore there are occasions when aquisitions like gasoline on a business trip that may be from a business that does not want to take your certification documents. The legislation allows a purchasing business to claim taxes paid in such situations same as many states provide for today.
Which is it? I pull up the Motel 6 after a long day on the road, do I pay the NRST with my bill or not?
Depends on two things, your company's policy on re-imbursment of expenses to you, and whether or not motel-poduck that you decided to stay trusts your ceritfication. The legislation provides a means to accomodate situations in which the business pays the tax implicitly (like in personal asset conversions), or explicitly and recovers such taxes paid.
Do you have a problem with business being able to recover federal sales tax paid in such situations?
I am not going to be reselling the room, so a resale certificate would be bogus. And I don't want to be arguing with the high school dropout at the Wenatchee Holiday Inn about whether I hav proved a business purpose.
With all that said, I do not see how this program will not be abused if they make it work in a way this is friendly to business it will be ripe for abuse.
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