Posted on 01/20/2008 6:29:07 AM PST by Man50D
During an election season, one of the first losers is the truth. The current misinformation campaign against the FairTax has been particularly virulent. Last month the FairTax was being panned by some columnists as a "crackpot scheme," even though it could be collected exactly the same way as its close cousin, the value-added tax, which is the most successful tax in the world. This month the FairTax is being vilified by various columnists as a tax increase for the middle class, even though it would provide a substantial tax cut for two-parent middle class families. Specifically, in a recent column, George Will asked, "Do you want a president (Mike Huckabee, proponent of a national sales tax of at least 30 percent) pledged to radically increase the proportion of federal taxes paid by the middle class?" Similarly, Time magazine's business and economics columnist Justin Fox wrote a blog piece entitled, "The FairTax and its big break for the $200,000-plus crowd."
The FairTax is a national sales tax that would replace the income taxes, the payroll taxes, and the gift and inheritance taxes. It would be a 30 percent sales tax on retail purchases. Since 30 cents is 23 percent of $1.30 (the amount you would pay on a $1 item), a 30 percent FairTax would cost you about 23 percent of your consumption. To help you pay the tax, you would get a prebate check or a debit card credit at the beginning of each month equivalent to the amount you would pay when buying necessities. In 2007, that amount would have been based upon $10,210 spending per adult and $3,480 spending per child.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
The effective tax rate would typically be much lower for everyone under the FairTax than under the income tax and most would benefit greatly.
Sory to disappoint you, but savings are not taxed under the FairTax.
That is the real problem. Consumption is not constant across incomes. Once basic needs have been met, consumption is very easy to control. Most people making a million dollars per year don't spend it all. Most people in the higher income brackets don't spend more than a small percentage of their income. Their income is invested and re-invested.
The cost of government would be borne by the middle and upper middle classes. Poorer people would pay little due to the prebate and very high income earners would pay relatively little because they spent far less than they earned.
What is it that scares you most about taxpayers getting their money back?
Aren’t they entitled?
Or is your blessed government the only one entitled to our money?
Perhaps you’d provide an economic study to show us???
It's a welfare scheme, not a refund.
1. Why collect the extra money to fund the entitlement program in the first place?
2. If those taxes are already embedded, why don't the FTers support making those entitlement payments now?
[crickets]
Backwards. I'm NOT supporting the scheme.
I’m waiting for you to say something funny.
Saving of after tax money made before the implementation of the FT ARE taxed a second time when spent. Those of us who have same should be given a prebate at the start date of the FT (to be fair). Should the FT rate rise later, another prebate would be in order. In fact, I should get a prebate for the equity in my house.
If there is no prebate, there is no Marxist progressivity to the tax.
It forces illegal aliens, drug dealers, etc to not pay anything in taxes - just like at present.
It forces US products to increase enormously in price to kill off any competitive edge.
It is so impossibly complex that it will take twice as much paperwork to contain all the details (what??? 133 pages - that's an outrage!~!)
2. If those taxes are already embedded, why don't the FTers support making those entitlement payments now?
LOL...."those" taxes aren't embedded! They would be part of the sales tax if Fair Tax is enacted.
Only in your strange little world is it called welfare when a person gets their tax money returned to them.
I really don't know what your problem is but I'll bet that it is hard to pronounce.
But keep in mind under the FairTax (unlike with the income tax) that not everything is taxed so that the effective tax rate is much lower than even the 23%.
FT needs to supply a few axis (age, after tax investments, before tax investments, income, years to retirement, earned income, etc, etc, etc) analysis of who will be the losers along with who will be the winners and by how much.
Taxation is still theft, no matter how it is applied.
FTers have been hysterically insisting that the 30% is embedded for the last several years on FR.
Is there a new talking point fax?
Exactly.
There is no progressivity to it anyway.
There is a base threshold under which little or no taxes are paid and neither of us wants to be living like that.
But unless you figure it to be progressive since you pay more tax for your 70,000 car than I do for my 35,000 car, the sales tax definitely is not the Marxist progressive tax.
Everyone pays the same tax rate. Everyone gets an exclusion and a rebate/prebate.
It's good to see that you see it correctly - as do many others. It's time for the income tax to be gone along with the government's maltreatment of citizens via the tax code.
You are unclear as to what “those” taxes are.
There was no reason to believe that you were referring to payroll taxes and 30% is light for some people.
If you are talking about the sales tax, it is 23% inclusive.
But you knew it and decided to use those cheap, distorting sunglasses again.
You’ve been busted more times than rodney king.
All of the "in the aggregate" is fine for economists, but the rest of us are like gamblers. We either win or lose. The gov't gets the "house" take as do studies of people in the aggregate.
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