Don't forget about the brake on the economy of compliance costs...currently poured down the toilet and non productive. Turn that into productive investment and each class of people will have to pay a smaller share. The economy gets better and all boats rise.
Until little people have money to save and invest either in investments or themselves, their opportunities are limited. Work more hours, get higher pay per hour, spend less money and save it. Give them a little more money up front and an incentive to save and invest with almost no taxes and see how they prosper. Who cares if the rich get richer as long as the poor get richer? Take the brakes off!
The very rich don't pay their fair share now through avoidance and foundations, just look at Mrs Heinz-Kerry.
Make America truly a land of opportunity for its citizens.
Dear rolling_stone,
I've rolled around with this part of the conversation more than once with other posters. As a small business owner, I don't find that tax compliance costs me very much. There are whole other sets of governmental compliance burdens that I bear, some direct, some indirect. They have to do with regulations concerning safety and health, wage, overtime rules (very complicated and ambiguous, those), rules about offering health insurance, anti-discrimination laws and rules, rules affecting how I may hire and fire.
My tax compliance costs are less than 1% of my revenues. Having had this conversation with NRSTers before, I'm willing to admit that some businesses have bigger compliance costs than I do, but I doubt it tops 2% of GDP.
And most of my tax compliance costs (as I've explained before) just won't be going away. I will STILL have to report all wage data to the federal and state governments, I will STILL have to pay unemployment insurance, and workers' compensation insurance, which require that I permit audits of my books. And in my case, because I sell only services, I will now have new compliance costs related to collecting the national retail sales tax.
Of the fraction of 1% that I currently spend on compliance, maybe I'll save some. Maybe not.
"Until little people have money to save and invest either in investments or themselves, their opportunities are limited."
As either both take-home wages AND prices will go up nominally, or take-home wages AND prices will nominally stay around the same (after taking into account the addition of the NRST), "little people" won't have any more money to save and invest. And "little people" already have tremendous incentives to save, in the forms of all the different qualified retirement accounts and other qualified savings accounts that are available.
And a lot of "little people" actually make use of these accounts. 50% of households own equities, either indirectly through mutual funds, or directly. Most households hold these assets through retirement accounts.
"The very rich don't pay their fair share now through avoidance and foundations, just look at Mrs Heinz-Kerry."
We don't really know the shape of her finances, and thus, we don't really know what she's really earning and really paying.
What we DO know is that the very rich actually DO pay most of the income taxes and capital gains taxes in the United States right now, and that this actually does, on average, come to a significant percentage of their income.
Whast we DO know is that very rich folks consume a much smaller percentage of their income, on average, than middle class folks, and thus, the NRST will be a significant tax cut for them.
Which is fine by me, as I'm working to join that class.
But if these folks, who pay the outsized portion of taxes now, have their tax liabilities drop, someone has to pick up the tab. We know it isn't the poor. So if it isn't the very rich, or the poor, guess who gets the tab?
Because it's revenue neutral, it's a zero sum game.
sitetest