All those do all they legally can to avoid taxes and there are many legal ways to do that. While the liberals rail about taxing the rich they are busy opening back doors to let them out of the trap. All have numerous trust, foundations, and corporations which buy much of what they own and shield their children from estate taxes.
But, they all buy. Legal or illegal, they all buy. Much of that is taxable even if they do buy "used" estates, cars, art, antiques, etc.
I don't care how much the rich have and actually want them to have even more. They have to do something with it. When they sock it away in the bank the bank can't just hold it and pay them interest. The bank must put it to work in a way that the depositor makes money, the bank makes money, and the person they lend the money to makes money. Same with investments, no matter what they are. Along the way a lot of money is made and a lot of it is spent on taxable items.
The best way to make the rich pay their "fair share" is to become one. Then miraculously it becomes fair.
Thus, where income is now generally subject to tax, and thus, these folks pay whether they buy a new Lexus or 1,000 shares of IBM, under the NRST, these folks will pay much less in taxes than they are paying now. Much, much less.
I am not sure I agree with this but it doesn't matter that much. A super rich family of four has four purchasers and one income. That narrows the gap considerably.
A poor family of four has one or two wage earners but four purchasers, or four people for which things are bought. Generally speaking the purchases taxed are equal to the wages taxed.
A middle class family with credit cards usually engages in lots of transactions.
I am confident the tax money to run the government will be there. The tax base increases, the prices stay close, and the worker has more to spend.
I can't understand how but on two occasions when I started to post the above, pigdog's name was in the To: place although it was sitetest's post that I was replying to. I made sure I pressed the correct reply button but pigdogs name popped up. Sitetest, maybe you have been hacked. :-)
Dear Mind-numbed Robot,
I didn't say that rich folks don't buy stuff that will be taxable. What I said is that overall, their purchases will be a much smaller percentage of their income than the non-rich.
Thus, family of four with $60,000 in annual income will likely spend better than $50,000. Family of four with $6,000,000 in annual income will likely spend some hundreds of thousands, or even into seven figures in "retail" consumption. And a large chunk will typically be non-taxable stuff. But probably close to half, or more, of that income will be re-invested. By the way, rich folks don't keep a large portion of their assets in "the bank." What happens with the bulk of the re-invested assets is that they go to business for investment. Which is good!
But that money doesn't directly generate any taxes under the NRST. It needs to work its way through to the retail purchaser, or the employee spending his (gross? net? Boortz certainly didn't seem to know) income on taxable purchases. And frankly, in the CURRENT system, that money gets taxed even earlier in the cycle, in the form of corporate income taxes and personal and payroll taxes on the employee.
Anyway, if half their money is re-invested, probably $3 million goes untaxed. Under the income tax, the $6 million will be taxed, probably around a total rate of about 20% - 25%.
Another place where we lose revenue is when the very rich change their investment portfolios. Wealthy Mr. Smith thinks IBM's not going to market perform, so he sells 50,000 shares, and pays federal 15% capital gains tax. He takes the proceeds and buys 250,000 of some microcap company that has a new method of building widgets.
Under the NRST, that tax is no longer paid. Another way the rich get richer.
Overall, taxes on the rich will decline dramatically. Not for every rich person, but for the rich as a class.
Works for me.
"I am confident the tax money to run the government will be there."
Of course, there's always the middle class to pay.
And pay.
I don't really see the tax base expanding enough to: 1. get more low-income folks netted out of the tax scheme (through the "prebate"); 2. dramatically decrease taxes for rich folks; and 3. Not hit middle class folks hard.
Not everyone can be a winner.
sitetest