Posted on 08/26/2007 4:27:23 AM PDT by Aristotelian
Exactly right.
It’s the Spending, Stupid!
Again, we find someone who cannot defend the message, but needs to denigrate the messenger...
They kind of blow that whole scheme in the water with the FairTax bill. In that they make the tax rate ratchet up to provide the required amount of revenue, rather than having to make do with what the tax rate generates.
And of course the higher tax rate will likely cause further erosion in the tax collected.
And we’ll be back to an income tax on top of the sales tax.
Nice try. It’s the Spending, Stupid!
Nothing like using a 220 year old strawman who could not possibly enter an opinion on the UFT, eh?
As you pointed out this is a duplicate thread, started seven hours after the original. same exact title.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1886636
I just don't want to replace it with something else that could be worse.
If you will note I said and always have, that something needs to be done. HOWEVER, doing something just for the sake of doing anything is not the same as doing it right. Fair tax has more than a few issues to work out.
Some time it IS the devil you know. Bring me a certified Angel and we'll talk. I'd love to stop financing my CPA's Mercedes every year.
“That assumes those are the only choices.
The income tax is salvageable, but it needs to be greatly simplified. 25 years ago there were 2 tax brackets— lower and upper. Now there are 6, plus more deductions, credits and various doohickeys than anyone can make sense out of, so much to the point that the accounting and software industries get a boom every April 15.
We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater to fix the tax code.”
The income tax as it exists now is fundamentally flawed - it requires every American to become an accountant, and expose almost every detail of his or her personal finances. It is just wrong.
How do you think Daniel Boone or Davey Crockett would have felt about the Income Tax and the IRS? How about Ben Franklin?
It needs to change in a drastic way - a consumption tax works for me.
It then turns into a tax on living, making it a progressive tax in another form.
“I’d love to stop financing my CPA’s Mercedes every year.”
One little-discussed benefit to a consumption tax is the increased productivity of tens of millions of people doing something useful rather than filling out tax forms (or laying awake at night thinking about tax issues). Also, legions of tax preparers could get USEFUL CAREERS!
Who knows what might be accomplished? Not to mention the billions and billions saved... ;-)
A 50% inclusive FairTax.
(Calculatin': A $100 item with $100 tax added is $200. Since the tax is 50% of the total price, it's a 50% FairTax- voila!)
DEBUNKING THE FairTax:
A Fair Question about Fair Tax
OPEN LETTER TO BOORTZ/LINDER (FairTax)
JORGENSON EXPLODES FAIRTAX MYTH (FR Exclusive)
Fair Tax - Straightening Out Some Confusion
FAIR TAX BOOK- 2nd Ed. Revisions
A FAIRTAX PRIMER
President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform Final Report- Nov 2005 : Chapter 9
Fair Tax, Foul Politics [NRO on FairTax]
Fair Tax, Flawed Tax (Bartlett, WSJ)
WAGES: It has been made clear by many proponents of the FairTax that they are expecting 100% of their current gross pay, and that many employer/employee wage relationships, including those for government workers are controlled by contract. So, we'll assume every wage earner gets to keep 100% of their current gross pay. Everyone can figure out for him or herself what that gives them in terms of a take-home pay increase.
BUSINESS COSTS: If we assume that businesses get to keep their half of the payroll taxes (7.65% of all payroll costs up to first $95k per employee), plus taxes on corporate profits (average <2% of Cost of Goods sold) and some tax compliance savings (being generous we'll call this 1% savings), this gives the business about 8% of cost savings with which to potentially reduce prices.
PRICES: For domestic goods, if we assume that the entire 8% is passed along to the consumer, this means that pre-tax prices will be 92% of present day prices. That $10 twelve pack will now be $9.20. Of course, the twelve pack of imported beer is still $10 pre-tax. Once the 30% FairTax is added, the price of the domestic beer will be $11.96 and the price of the imported beer will be $13.00 even. So, domestic prices will go up about 20% and imported item prices will go up about 30%.
GOVERNMENT EXPENSES: Since the government expects this plan to enable them to purchase the same things they purchase now, they will need to raise sufficient revenue in order to achieve purchasing power parity. Since they will be paying the 30% FairTax on every item, we can assume that for stuff they buy, they will see the same 20% price increase on domestic items and 30% increase on imported items as other end consumers. So they will need to increase their dollar intake by this 20%+ to enable them to buy the same amount of stuff. And, of course all government salaries will have the 30% FairTax paid on the salary, less the employer half of the payroll taxes, so this is a net 22.35% increase in the cost of the entire payroll of the US government (and states too, but that is another can of worms).
ENTITLEMENT COSTS: Since the social security payments are linked to CPI, when this 20%+ price rise slams through the economy all the social security checks will have to be raised to cover this massive FairTax caused inflation. They will rise by at least 20%, and a litle more because the basket of goods will include some imported items like oil. Medicare/medical expenses will have the FairTax added, for a 20%+ increase.
GOVERNMENT PURCHASING POWER PARITY: with the cost of Payroll, plus everything they buy, plus the entitlements, all going up 20% plus we can assume that the governement will need to collect approximately 20%+ more of the new inflated dollars in order to buy what they are today with today's more stable dollars.
FAIR TAX RATE: Assuming nothing else changes regarding purchasing behavior, size of the government, etc. this means that the 30% FairTax would need to immediately raised 20% (to 36%) just to bring in all the inflated dollars that are required to fund the govt at present level. The price of domestic beer is now $12.50 and the import is $13.60. This assumes no evasion and no reduction in spending by consumers on new goods and services when the large sales tax is imposed. (an unrealistic assumption by the FairTaxers)
SAVED MONEY: All dollars that are post-tax savings would be devalued by the FairTax inflation by 20% in terms of what they can buy with their hard-earned and saved after-tax money.
Does this sound like a utopia to anyone? Isn't it very likely that a 36% sales tax (or much higher like 50%) will cause consumption to suffer and/or transactions driven into a barter system or the black market where they cannot be taxed. And every dollar that is taken from the legitimate economy is another increase that is needed in the FairTax rate in order to feed the government the amount of money it needs.
Isn't is likely that we will end up with an income tax again on top of the FairTax when this all plays out?
And once people either stop buying, or buy used, or barter for services, or buy on the black market, or funnel purchases through their businesses for a tax exemption, it is very likely that the FairTax inclusive rate would be 33%-- which is an exclusive rate of 50%, making the problem worse.
The FairTax plan makes the false ASSUMPTION that 23% inclusive will be enough to fully find the government at today's level.
FairTaxers generally agree that the FairTax will cause higher prices and FairTaxers think that these will be ok because the purchasing power is what matters. Wage earners will receive a pay increase with their 100% paychecks to compensate for the higher prices.
Domestic prices will rise about 18-25% after a small (max 8%) price cut and then the 30% FairTax is added-- and rise the full 30% for foreign items.
Stick with me here for just one more minute. The government will also need a "raise" to pay the higher prices (because the government pays the FairTax on everything too), and it will take the form of additional revenue that needs to be raised. That additional revenue can ONLY be raised by increasing the FairTax rate, there is no other source to generate revenue. So, the 23% rate when multiplied by 1.18 is now 27.1% inclusive, which is 37.2% exclusive.
And that assumes no reduction in the base. If we assume just the very minimum that the base reduces 8% due to reduction in shelf prices-- ie. no reduction in unit volume of sales, just an 8% lower price for everything, then we need to divide the 27.1% by 0.92 to get a new inclusive rate of 29.5%, which is 41.8% exclusive. And this assumes ZERO evasion, and the same exact level of unit sales as now.
Most recently the FairTax commission found that the FairTax Rate was grossly understated by the FairTax people and that the actual rate would have to be MUCH HIGHER than 29.87% exclusive due to 1)government paying itself tax and 2) erosion of the taxable base due to all factors. Just a 15% erosion in base, coupled with a Federal government costing 20% more than presently (the cost with the FairTax added) makes the rate 33% inclusive which is 50% exclusive.
The FairTax people need to go back to the drawing board and plug in the new reality where prices go up 18-25% and stick that in their models and see what somes out the other side. It won't be pretty is my expectation.
I want to see elimination of corporate taxes, elimination of death taxes, additional reductions in the marginal income tax rates until we find that we are the Laffer optimal point.
In addition I want to see Social Security privatized, and I am willing to pay extra money to pay for those who were promised this benefit, and never receive a penny of it myself. I also want to see Medicare reformed from top-to-bottom. I also want to see Tort Reform to reduce the exorbitant costs of insurance on our medical costs. And we need to reduce the scope of the Federal Government to its constitutionally mandated responsibilities and get rid of the rest. The Golden Goose that is America is way too fat and needs to be put on a severe diet.
These are what we need to do, incremental improvements in what we already have. This is already working and we should keep at it...even Boortz seems to think so. Boortz (9/20): "...the economy continues to go like gangbusters. We are right in the middle of an historic economic boom. Don't let the mainstream media or the Democrats tell you otherwise...we've never had it so good...
Rubbish.
25 years ago in 1982 there were 12 brackets from 12% to 50%.
Reagan's 1981 cuts (becoming fully effective over the 3 year period from '82 to '84) didn't simplify anything, they cut marginal rates by 25%, all based on the regime previously existing under Mr. Peanut except that all brackets over 50% were eliminated, which meant that the number of brackets dropped from 14 to 12.
Simplification had to wait until 1986, when the number of brackets was reduced from 12 to 3.
In the entire history of federal taxation, there has never been any such thing as "lower and upper" brackets. Even the first income tax law had many brackets.
In any case, the NRST "fair-tax" baloney is a pipe-dream which will never be enacted into law. I favor a flat-tax. Which will also probably never be enacted into law.
The ultimate irony is that the Russians and a bunch of ex-Soviet satellite states have flat income taxes, yet we don't and have no prospect of getting there any time soon.
I do not, as of right now as written and being promoted, support the Fair Tax.
I can assure you I paid income tax last year. I have the written checks and CPA bill to prove it.
So what is your point?
The Op Ed conveniently discounts the fact that the supplier of the tank would not have a corporate tax, so the tank might only cost$750,000 plus $250,000 in fair tax or a cool million like it did before.
What he also leaves out is right now it costs the IRS $25,000 to process the tax today and it also costs the supplier Accountants, Tax lawywers, auditors, clerks, filing systems, computer systems, more to track all of it.
Bottom line is that millions of Americans depend on all this bullcrap (including myself) for jobs. We will need to be retrained at a huge cost. While fair tax may be fair, it is probably too costly to implement.
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