Posted on 12/24/2007 7:55:05 AM PST by Alex Murphy
WASHINGTON — Mike Huckabee, one of the most conservative Republicans in the 2008 presidential race, has embraced one of the most radical ideas on the campaign trail: a plan to abolish all federal income and payroll taxes and replace them with a single 23% national sales tax.
The idea -- dubbed the "fair tax" by proponents -- has been a political asset for Huckabee; its well-organized backers have helped catapult him from the back of the presidential pack to its top tier.
Sales tax proponents have tapped into seething voter hostility toward the Internal Revenue Service to become a below-the-radar political force, popping up at campaign events and candidate forums in Iowa and elsewhere.
The efforts on Huckabee's behalf by sales tax advocates helped spur his surprise second-place showing in an August Iowa straw poll -- the breakthrough that marked the beginning of his rise in the state and nationwide.
He is the only major presidential candidate to make the idea central to his campaign. "The first thing I'd love to do as president: Put a 'going out of business' sign on the Internal Revenue Service," he said at one debate.
Some wonder, however, whether his embrace of the plan eventually could turn into a liability.
The sales tax proposal has been around for years but languished on the fringes of practical politics and policy. Tax professionals generally regard the idea as impractical, regressive and even "crackpot," as one critic puts it.
It has gone nowhere in Congress. The 2005 Presidential Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform soundly rejected the idea. And many politicians shy away from it because it is easy for opponents to portray it as a huge tax increase -- as Democrats did in a 2006 Senate race in South Carolina.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The best way to operate would be to invest the money and use some part of the earnings to consume allowing the rest to build and earn more. It’s called frugality. Or thrift.
You seem to have a good bit of time on your hands for accumulating facts and figures. That’s probably good since “idle fingers are the devil’s tools”. Keep right at it.
Perhaps you can figure out some other ideas which will still be sheer speculation ... very fanciful and highly amusing.
As for the poster Principled ... perhaps you should ask him; I’ll certainly not bother nor will I communicate with him about your “peculiar desires”. (Nor do I care if you get your kicks from porno though I think it’s despicable).
So you believe the economy is roaring along right now, eh???
No - I said effective rate which would be 11% making the total about $100 - IOW no change in price ... but you’d have more income with which to buy things. That amounts to increased purchasing power.
Exactly why we'll never have a flat tax or a fair tax or anything simple: the tax lawyers have too much of an interest in keeping the system as complicated as humanly possible.
That sounds good, but in the end, you can't get blood from a turnip.
Sure it does and of course the 16th gets repealed because the theiving bastards cant be trusted.Otherwise it would be an additional tax.Come to think of it are they not trying to do that now with the AMT?The rats want to screw the middle class with more taxes and the pubbies want to keep it on the table so we continue to vote for the lesser of two evils.Both will screw ya.
Im with you on that.Gonna be tough putting those pricks on a diet though.
"Lets see...hummm.sales tax at 8.3% and income tax rate on my salary is 24% and 15% on the stock I sold...if I add them up...this costs 347.99 so my total tax is....ahhh screw it"!
The thinking will be more like, "holy smokes, I paid 8.3% or 73.00 on my television last year set and now they want 220.00 in taxes on this drill press that costs the same. Screw "Fair"!!"
Human nature plays a big part in our reactions to taxes. We react to simple comparisons of whats in front of us!
Well, if my husband were retired, we would be paying that much too. But wait until Hillary gets her paws on the White House - everything will be “free”.
//sarc//
I haven’t seen you post a pornographic picture ... did I miss something ...The only thing you missed is that Principled is lying. He knows full well who posted said porno, he's simply blinded by hatred. There was no pornographic picture posted by xcamel...
I was there, I know what porno picture he's talking about and the person who posted it had it pulled...It wasn't xcamel...period.
Ah, but you’ve missed the point completely. That $100 of goods (under the income tax system) will now be $90 ... and you don’t pay an added tax of $30. Your effective tax rate would be something like 11% so you’d pay a total of $100 (tax inclusive) - and you only pay that if the item is taxable.Care to show how your little dream adds up to be revenue neutral?
According to the Fairtax rhetoric I would have to earn $130 to purchase the $100 item, and, according to the Fairtax rhetoric 23% of that $100 item is embedded taxes.
That means that so far the total amount of tax collected under the income tax is $53.00
Your dream scenario only collected $10...where's the other $43 to be revenue neutral?
Savings isn’t tax under the FairTax - nor the income from it.There's no free lunch with the Fairtax. The income from your savings is taxed when you spend it...that's the intent of the plan.
Interest earned (savings) or paid (credit card, mortgage, auto loan etc.) is subject to taxation under the Fairtax...as they say "read the bill".
Get it down to 10% and cut spending accordingly and I’m on board.
And we can only assume what tax rates will be when we get around to spending.
“The FairTax does not tax those transactions at all - only consumption.”
It really doesn’t matter. The Fair Tax is not going to happen, and I will put good betting money on the proposition.
It is written into the bill that the FairTax is not enacted until the income tax amendment is repealed. That may doom the bill from ever being enacted, but we won’t have both the FairTax and an income tax.
Yes, I agree that would be disastrous if that happened. But like I said, the bill is written to avoid that.
I can certainly agree there. The Federal Government is bloated way beyond its means and way beyond its constitutional mandate. But the FairTax does constitute the largest transfer of power from politicians to the people, maybe in the history of the country. And for that reason, I don't see it ever passing, sadly.
You missed a very important part of the process, or don’t understand the free market very well. If you sell a product for $100. After the FairTax is enacted, the cost of producing that product drops about $22. Are you going to pocket that $22, or are you going to lower the price to try to gain market share?
Market forces will drive down the prices, removing the previously embedded taxes, and they are replaced by the FairTax. None of your examples took that into account.
So right now, a top 50% earner pays 13.84% (per your example) of their income AND they pay about 22% of every product they buy. Under the FairTax, no income tax and a 23% inclusive sales tax.
Mark Twain
Oh - and the ‘sock puppet radar signal’ is very strong with this one....
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