Posted on 04/07/2010 3:11:00 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A taxing development surfaced on Wednesday.
White House economic advisor Paul Volcker is calling for a new national sales tax -- a value added tax or "vat" -- to help close the deficit.
But as CBS 2 HD found out area residents are saying "vat chance."
Talk about starting a tax revolt. Volcker's call for a new national sales tax -- on top of the state and local sales taxes we pay now -- got a loud Bronx cheer from just about everyone.
"That's crazy. That really is crazy. Why would need any more taxes than we already have?" said Kathy Merritt of Watchung, N.J.
"It's a bad idea. New Yorkers are struggling as it is already. We don't need that. We need incentives, breaks, jobs," East New York's Lee Santiago said.
"They're trying to make those of us who have a few bucks poor so everyone will be poor and everyone will be the same," added Charlotte Wein of Midtown.
Here's what the former mayor of Yonkers said when CBS 2 HD into him on the street:
"The Obama administration continues to be extremely out of touch with mainstream America. We're over-taxed so it's just a continuation of his far left, extreme left, agenda and I think it's a disaster for New York and actually the rest of the country, too," John Spencer said.
The new so-called value added tax would come on top of state and local taxes. Economists say the tax would also be imposed on manufacturers and producers.
"You don't need a PhD in economics to figure out that what the producer is going to do is pass this along to the customer," said Ken Goldstein of The Conference Board.
So if the vat is 10 percent, that sweater you pay $31.50 for today would have and additional:
*50 cents in taxes added on by the yarn supplier
*$1 in taxes added on by the manufacturer
*50 cents added on by the wholesaler
*$1.50 added on by the retailer
Now the sweater costs $35 plus state and local sales taxes, which is 8.75 percent in New York City.
One thing that may keep the Obama administration from imposing the tax this year is that every member of Congress is up for election come November. But next year, all bets are off.
Jose Barro, an economist for the Manhattan Institute, told CBS 2 HD that the vat might work if the government agreed to reduce personal income and corporate taxes at the same time.
Just vote them OUT!
Does anyone see that happening?
No VAT for FAT CATS!
They want VAT— then the income tax has to go.
National Sales tax has me screaming: “To Hell with a National Sales Tax.”
Eliminate. Not reduce. And Cap the VAT. Otherwise. NO B.O.
Problem is with most nation’s you get a VAT and the income tax. Like Canada and Great Britain.
Whenever they get impressed by political development, we can be sure that we are in DEEP trouble. LOL.
The list, ping
Obama’s Health Care Fraud didn’t trigger civil unrest and violence, so he’s got to dig deeper until he finds something that will start the violence he seeks.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
If this keeps up, a lot of folks are simply going to leave. As with the parable of the men at the restaurant (copied from another thread):
“Suppose that every day 10 men go to a restaurant for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to $100. If it was paid the way we pay our taxes, the first four men would pay nothing; the fifth would pay $1; the sixth would pay $3; the seventh $7; the eighth $12; the ninth $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.”
The 10 men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement until the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20.” Now dinner for the 10 only costs $80. The first four are unaffected. They still eat for free. Can you figure out how to divvy up the $20 savings among the remaining six so that everyone gets his fair share? The men realize that $20 divided by 6 is $3.33, but if they subtract that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being paid to eat their meal.
The restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same percentage, being sure to give each a break, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay. And so now the fifth man paid nothing, the sixth pitched in $2, the seventh paid $5, the eighth paid $9, the ninth paid $12, leaving the tenth man with a bill of $52 instead of $59.
Outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. “I only got a dollar out of the $20,” complained the sixth man, pointing to the tenth, “and he got $7!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got seven times more than me!”
“That’s true,” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $7 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor.”
Then, the nine men surrounded the tenth man (the richest one, paying the most) and beat him up. The next night the richest man didn’t show up for dinner, so now the nine men sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They were $52 short!
“And that, boys, girls and college instructors, is how America’s tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table any more. There are lots of good restaurants in Switzerland and the Caribbean.”
If the tax system becomes any more punitive, many are simply going to eat at different restaurants, and the burden will suddenly fall on many who never realized how much of a free ride they were getting. That sort of thing won’t end well.
Create a monstrous deficient and then say you need tax money. Brilliant!!
As long as nobody who makes less than 250k pays not one penny. Just like he promised. What a Collassal Liar!
“Hell with vat”
The violence is going to come after they get voted out in the form of hearings, trials and jail time.
No, not any more than they’ll cut their wasteful spending.
Umm...no. It would negate the reason they'd be instituting the VAT in the first place.
In the 1970s, there was a congressman from CA(?) by the name of Al Ullman who proposed a VAT and went around the country selling this tax that, according to him, would not add “a single penny of new taxes”. Most people heard that part and wanted to know why we needed the VAT.
Needless to say, neither he nor his VAT were supported by the voting public and both went on to live in obscurity. He wasn’t re-elected.
How about we consider it AFTER we get our $2,400 per family reduction for health costs,
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