Posted on 08/15/2005 5:55:06 AM PDT by OESY
Do you plan to accept your share of prebates in which every US household is essentially on a welfare program getting a monthly dole check from Uncle Sam? Or do you want off the database?
The National Sales Tax is not going to be a burden taken off your shoulders and dumped on the big Wal-Mart in the sky.
Millions of business people in this country are going to become tax collection and reporting agents when they are not now. (And please don't go into payroll taxes again. For the average business owner, they are not comparable to making a daily accounting for payment of sales tax.)
If you think a "business" is only your local Wal-Mart, may I remind you that after the government, most people in this country earn their living from small businesses -- not the giants.
I would simply invite you to consider how much your life would change if you had to report to the government every nickel that fell into your hands on a given day, and multiply that task by the hundreds of transactions for the small business owner. I don't see how tracking individual transactions can be avoided as there must be some accounting control to verify sales and the amount of tax owed.
This transition will not be painless.
The Fair Tax thing is one of the great scams of all time. However, the one way to shut up the serious Fair Tax proponents is to tell them that unearned income will be taxed at the same rate as earned income. Then they run for the hills. It's pretty funny to watch, actually.
The 23% embedded taxes just do not exist unless you assume that the business keeps the income taxes and FICA taxes that are currently being withheld. But of course they state that the employee gets their full paycheck with no taxes withheld so there are no tax savings. At the most, there is the employer portion of the FICA (7.65% of payroll) and some compliance costs (at best minmal savings). This is not close to 23%.
So, it appears that either A) the price of retail goods will be higher when the tax is added, not the same, or B) employee wages will be reduced to save the company money or C)some combination of the two.
The 23% embedded taxes/costs is a myth. See my example at post 271, 281 and 321 of a fictional carwash (or other labor intensive service business).
Such babble!
in what context do you make earned ve unearned income argument?
very predictable babble too
Great! The government will just take everyone at their word. I don't think so.
Individual households do not remit retail taxes to government. The retai; business does after collecting it with the sales transaction.
Today there are approximately 120 million household on which financial and personal data is reported to the federal government detailing to deductibile expenditures and gross incomes of each individual reporting for those households.
Under a retail sales tax, the number of reporting businesses will be on the order of 20 million filing business sales tax returns with no individual level detail required, reporting to state tax bureaus rather than federal.
The FairTax NRST tax system, is a far cry from everyone reporting or government taking "everyone's" word or collecting information on individual level about everyone even.
Your hyperbole is noted for what it is. A rather unproductive exclaimation having little to do with reality and the significant improvements that a retail sales tax provides to the privacy and freedom from government intrusiveness as compared to the current federal income/payroll tax system or any other system that has been proposed to congress as tax reform todate.
You have a better tax system that isolates the individual more from a predatory federal govenment, I'm all ears. Thus far I have seen few suggestions of anything suggesting a federal tax reform that would even begin to meet the requirements you appear to demand and be acceptable to the electorate as a whole.
I'm all open for your suggestions where you can show a more viable tax reform that informs the individual voter of the proportionate cost of government in their lives and yet does not unnecessarily intrude into their household and personal financial privacy on a federal level.
Let's put it this way -- and in all due respect to Pete's dad -- the vast majority of young Peter's income falls under the "unearned" category. That would include dividends from stocks, income from rental property, bonds, etc. etc.
Or, actually D) - none of the above.
Rob does not understand what embedded tax costs are or how they become that way.
There have been many independent economic studies of the FairTax and some can be found on the FairTax website.
I do suggest you read the bill, spend some time investigating the points of interest to you on the FairTax website, and then make your own judgement.
The FairTax supporters (and we make no pretense to be anything other than that) are definitely for the FairTax and are trying to help people interested in learning about the FairTax, but there are many on these threads that are not actively for any sort of real tax plan as perhaps you'll notice.
I'm all for the Fair Tax, as long as it taxes unearned income at the same rate. Any chance of that? After all, it's only fair, right?
Not so durasell - and it is not income (earned or unearned) that is taxed but certain types of consumption as it says in the bill.
I think they shouldcharge $20,000 to vote, and then we can eliminate all income taxes, estate and FICA taxes, and cut spending by however much is needed with our new Congress. That would be revenue neutral and most Americans would come out ahead.
Who do you think you're fooling. In view of #383, you're obviously not "for" anything as you say you are. Isn't that a great surprise?
Great, Rob, let's see your detailed revenue neutral derivation. After all we showed you several for the FairTax.
Can you explain yet how the service business saves any money on labor (besides the employer portion of the FICA which is debatable)? Where do you get to 23% savings, example is at 271, 281 and 321. Do you disagree with anything major in that example? If so what?
At least I am trying to work through real world examples, you are relying on govt economic estimates. Try to refute the real world examples in a way that makes sense.
I'd be all for filling out my taxes on a postcard. Fine. Just as long as my pitiful salary is taxed at the same rate as the $10 million trust fund the guy down the street lives on.
However, the one way to shut up the serious Fair Tax proponents is to tell them that unearned income will be taxed at the same rate as earned income. Then they run for the hills. It's pretty funny to watch, actually.
Really, I haven't seen that at all. Obviously unearned income spent on consumption is taxed under any tax system classified as a consumption tax. Including the Flat Tax.
For it is a point of fact any income or returned capita, whatever its source, that is spent for personal consumption instead of being re-invested obviously is taxed under any retail sales tax. That just means the Tereza is going to be taxed the same for her consumption as the guy sitting on wealfare, same rate, regardless of her source of funds for her purchase of goodies to support her lifestyle.
The whole point of a retail sales tax is to tax consumption, the source of the funds that are applied to said personal consumption being irrelavant.
By the way the same claim is made by the Flat Tax folks. That all income is taxed once either at the business level where the imposition passes down to the individual in higher prices, lower wages or loss in returns on investment pretty much hidden from the perceptions of the voter, and at the personal level directly by taxing wages and retirement income per current bills before Congress.
The following is the basis from which all Flat Tax proposal derive their genesis, with variations in who remits tax on what business or citizen according to what the of the authors of the specific bill submitted figure they can sell to the public.
The Flat Tax; Chapter 3, by Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka
| In our system, all income is classified as either business income or wages (including salaries and retirement benefits). The system is airtight. Taxes on both types of income are equal. The wage tax has features to make the overall system progressive. Both taxes have postcard forms. The low tax rate of 19 percent is enough to match the revenue of the federal tax system as it existed in 1993, the last full year of data available as we write. Here is the logic of our system, stripped to basics: We want to tax consumption. The public does one of two things with its income—spends it or invests it. We can measure consumption as income minus investment. A really simple tax would just have each firm pay tax on the total amount of income generated by the firm less that firm’s investment in plant and equipment. The value-added tax works just that way. But a value-added tax is unfair because it is not progressive. That’s why we break the tax in two. The firm pays tax on all the income generated at the firm except the income paid to its workers. The workers pay tax on what they earn, and the tax they pay is progressive. To measure the total amount of income generated at a business, the best approach is to take the total receipts of the firm over the year and subtract the payments the firm has made to its workers and suppliers. This approach guarantees a comprehensive tax base. The successful value-added taxes in Europe work this way. The base for the business tax is the following: Total revenue from sales of goods and services less purchases of inputs from other firms less wages, salaries, and pensions paid to workers less purchases of plant and equipment The other piece is the wage tax. Each family pays 19 percent of its wage, salary, and pension income over a family allowance (the allowance makes the system progressive). The base for the compensation tax is total wages, salaries, and retirement benefits less the total amount of family allowances. |
The revenue neutral calculation you are talking about is a calculation of how much stuff is sold that will be subject to the Fair Tax, divided by the amount of revenue that needs to be replaced.
It does not show how much those sales volumes will change to changes in price. Nor does it show how people taking action to avoid paying 30% tax will affect the calculations.
I could just as well say America uses 146 billion gallons of gasoline per year, so we will charge $16 per gallon tax on every gallon sold. and raise $2 Trillion. That is a revenue neutral calculation too. It doesn't mean anything in the real world though for obvious reasons.
"Real World"??? No kidding - you've managed to convince yourself of that? And we both know from your posting history to date that you're not trying to "work through" anything at all but merely wish to pick a fight.
I cannot think of a single good reason why any FairTax supporter should try to "educate" you since you've clearly shown you are not interested in that at all over hundreds of posts.
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.