Posted on 06/07/2010 8:08:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
the VAT, teh Fair Tax are merely offering the government other pockets to pick. if anybody thinks for a minute that congress is going to get rid of the IRS, I have a nice bridge in brooklyn I can sell, cheap.
lower the rates of the corporate tax but close the special interest loopholes.
The only thing I like about the Corporate tax is that EVERYONE pays it (poor people just dont know it or see it)
Those “fair tax” people make me insane with their ‘tax ionclusive’ tax rate specifications and their ‘rebate’ to poor people making under XXX per year.
That would introduce the single easiest vote-buying scheme in the USA- as each politican tried to out-promise their opponent on how much ‘rebate’ they would give to the poor.
Has anyone really crunched the numbers to find out how many jobs would be lost? All those Tax Lawyers, Accountants, and of course IRS, cut in what? 1/32?
It sounds like a VAT would serve to drive even more manufacturing offshore.
teh IRS isn’t going go go anywhere. congress gets too much use from it, and the income tax isn’t going to change. all these new proposals will do is point out other pockets for the government to pick, to feed the beast.
the call to reduce the IRS is part of the smoke and mirrors of these proposals. no congresscritter would ever hurt the IRS - they love the revenue stream too much.
This is not exactly in concert with the article but I want to examine the premise.
I have seen articles that detailed the amount of taxes included in the retail price of damn near everything you buy.
You can readily tell these are dated but I feel safe in assuming the taxes have not decreased.
Taxes account for 35 cents of the cost of a $1.14 loaf of bread.
18 cents of a 50-cent can of soda go toward taxes.
72 percent of the cost of a 750-ml bottle of liquor goes toward taxes.
Taxes for an $80 hotel room average 43 percent.
Taxes account for $63.60 of a $159 airline ticket.
A $153.09 monthly utility bill consists of $39.35 in taxes.
There are plenty of unexpected taxes that raise the price of goods and services -- sin taxes, import duties, user fees and excise taxes on things as varied as gas guzzlers, firearms, communications services and air travel.
The less visible a tax is, the less likely taxpayers will be aware of it, unsettled by it and advocate against it.
The next time you find buried treasure, remember to report it as regular income.
Even if you're so broke that creditors have forgiven part of your debt, you're not off the hook. The forgiven portion of your debt is "income" and may be taxable as such. Note that there are exceptions if the debt was secured by your principal residence or you declare bankruptcy or are insolvent at the time.
If you take a bribe or steal property, it's income unless you give it back before the tax year is over. Just a tip.
Will a Value Added Tax replace or be in addition to the hidden taxes already in place?
American University's Pike says the United States is the only industrialized country that does not have a value-added tax, which taxes all consumer goods and services at each step of the manufacturing process.
"A value-added tax could replace all these nickel-and-dime annoyance taxes," he says. But it also would level the playing field so everyone would be taxed for buying products and not just specialty items.
Under a system of value-added taxes, each time a company handles a product on its way from raw material to finished good, it pays a tax on the increased value. Ultimately, all those taxes are reflected in the retail price of a good or service.
Of course, that makes a VAT the ultimate hidden tax. Keep an eye on Congress. Our representatives are currently looking into the possibility of a VAT to raise additional revenue.
“Wealth has to be produced before you redistibute it.”
This seems to be the element of capitalism that is beyond understanding for many progressives, including the president. They act as if wealth or income are just “there” and the only decision that must be made is how to split up the pie. They seem not to grasp that every dollar shifted from taxpayers to nontaxpayers shrinks the size of the pie by diminishing the incentives to work in the first place. Every dollar transferred costs the economy about 30 cents in lower output—an efficiency loss that is entirely overlooked by their preoccupation with “fairness.”
Reagan so wiely observed that we are not trillions in debt because we did not tax enough, we are trillions in debt because we spent to much.
One thing that I think will happen is that Obama’s tax-focus will blow up on him. He looks more and more like a Ceaser when he puts draconian tax laws in effect. There is something to be said aabout an underground economy...it workds well in Italy...when things are tough.
Obama looks like a petty tyrant.
The author is wrong. We do not have a VAT although many states have some form of inventory tax. A VAT is a vast new, complex tax scheme. Its impact may be similar to a corporate income tax but it is clearly a different tax scheme. The rats are somewhat sour on corporate income taxes because taxes vary with profits. The rats want to strangle the goose without regards to profits. When production falls, the rats will modify the VAT rate to collect more taxes on less production.
The author is also wrong that corporate income taxes are regressive. Never fall into the trap of regressive taxation. Corporate income taxes hit all consumers about the same. The left does not like corporate income taxes because they cannot exempt 50% of the population from indirect taxation and force the top 10% or so to pay most of the indirect taxes.
Now that i think about it, I LOVE the corporate tax most of all.
Idiots (the same one who vote for those evil rich people to pay taxes) are too stupid to know that THEY pay corporate taxes in the form of higher prices.
And they will actually vote more and more for those ‘evil corporations’ to pay more taxes!!
Why aren’t liberals onto this???
They can get poor people to tax them selves un-knowingly!!! and get a percentage of ALL the populations income, and yet still let the enterprenuers make and generate real jobs so that they can get even more tax money
oh wait... liberals are pretty stupid themselves
“The only thing the VAT would do is give liberals and Rhinos more money to spend. It wont help the deficit one bit.”
We are trying to get rid of ours.
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