I want off the discussion of a sales tax for the rest of my lifetime.
Flat tax fine.
National Sales Tax is a scam through and through. It will never end and just makes it easier for government to increase taxes further.
Want another 100 billion. Just increase one tax. Done.
Actually, the experience here in Canada has been that the sales tax is the most difficult to increase because it’s so visible. Corporate and payroll taxes are the easiest to hike because most voters don’t notice, but add a penny to the sales tax and EVERYONE notices.
>>I want off the discussion of a sales tax for the rest of my lifetime.
Flat tax fine.
National Sales Tax is a scam through and through. It will never end and just makes it easier for government to increase taxes further.
Want another 100 billion. Just increase one tax. Done.<<
Yes, but if there is only one tax, everyone knows how high it is. When you nickel and dime people here and there it is easier to raise taxes. When people see that their sales tax is 60%, it will be much harder.
It is also very fair becuase it becomes a flat tax. That is, the guy that earns $200k pays the same percentage as the guy that earns $20k.
‘Course, it will never happen, at least as a replacement for the federal income tax.
They want to shift all the tax burden to sales because it acts as a subsidy to exports because exported goods are not taxed.
It also acts like an import tariff because all of the tax burden is on sales and it is born equally by both domestic and foreign goods. Most foreign goods would also have embedded taxes from their home country as well that contribute to their cost.
The shift from an income tax to a sales tax will also generate a huge spike in the price of purchasing items (including the taxes). You will get more dollars in your take home pay to offset that, but each dollar buys less.
If you think the weak dollar is a problem now, what do you think an instant 20% to 30% drop in domestic purchasing power would do?
How do you think all the nations that have been financing out debt that we would then pay back in devalued dollars would feel about that?
I'm thinking it would be much harder to get financing for our national debt, and since we are constantly paying off and refinancing short term debt, it wouldn't just be a problem with borrowing for new spending. A lot of the debt we owe would come due, and we wouldn't able to refinance the old debt either.
The "Fair Tax" would very likely bankrupt the US simply because we would screw over our creditors to the point where they wouldn't continue to lend us money any more.