Trillions stolen before anyone ever even sees their money.
If people had their money and then had to part with it (rather than being stolen before they ever saw it), they would be up in arms.
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Posted on 09/30/2011 5:41:07 AM PDT by New Jersey Realist
'Suddenly, liberal Democrats are making the same argument about the tax code that I've been making for 20 years," laughs former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey. "Welcome to the party." Mr. Armey, who along with Steve Forbes has been the torch bearer for the flat tax since the early 1990s, believes that the latest applause line from President Obama that "billionaires should pay the same tax rate as janitors" may be the political gateway to sweeping tax reform.
Mr. Forbes sees an opening here too and says: "The flat tax is the perfect issue for these times. It fixes the economy and doesn't cost a dime." He's right. It's the teed-up GOP response to a jobless recovery and the near-universal sentiment among voters that the tax code is corrupt beyond repair.
That case is inadvertently helped as Mr. Obama and his new best friend, billionaire Warren Buffett, barnstorm the country trashing the tax system for, as the Oracle of Omaha puts it, "coddling the super rich." In truth, the system isn't nearly as skewed in favor of those at the top of the income pyramid as they allege: Today the top 1% pay 38% of the income tax. But in Washington, perception drives policy. The virtue of a flat tax with no deductions is that it provides an ironclad guarantee that the rich pay no lower a tax rate than janitors and secretaries.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Right - my question is... what does he think can be better than the fair tax? Why is he changing? What would be easier and why?
Trillions stolen before anyone ever even sees their money.
If people had their money and then had to part with it (rather than being stolen before they ever saw it), they would be up in arms.
.
Phase 1 - Immediate Boost
As I have outlined, the following represent the minimum for feeding the economic engine and are the “low hanging fruit” offering the most “bang for the buck”
Reduce individual and business income taxes to a maximum 25%
Eliminate taxes on repatriated foreign profits and capital gains.
The capital gains tax is a wall separating those with ideas from those with money.
Why would we want to wall off those with ideas? That’s where we get business formation, job creation and innovation.
When companies sell products overseas they face double taxation when those profits are brought home (repatriation) to invest in America and pay its workers.
Companies don’t ship jobs overseas, Liberals ship capital overseas and the jobs merely follow.
Phase 1 - Enhanced Plan
Current circumstances call for bolder action.
The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan incorporates the features of Phase One and gets us a step closer to Phase two.
I call on the Super Committee to pass the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan along with their spending cut package.
The Phase 1 Enhanced Plan unites Flat Tax supporters with Fair tax supporters.
Achieves the broadest possible tax base along with the lowest possible rate of 9%.
It ends the Payroll Tax completely – a permanent holiday!
Zero capital gains tax
Ends the Death Tax.
Eliminates double taxation of dividends
Business Flat Tax – 9%
Gross income less all investments, all purchases from other businesses and all dividends paid to shareholders.
Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for payroll employed in the zone.
Individual Flat Tax – 9%.
Gross income less charitable deductions.
Empowerment Zones will offer additional deductions for those living and/or working in the zone.
National Sales Tax – 9%.
This gets the Fair Tax off the sidelines and into the game.
Phase 2 – The Fair Tax
Amidst a backdrop of the economic boom created by the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan, I will begin the process of educating the American people on the benefits of continuing the next step to the Fair Tax.
The Fair Tax would ultimately replace individual and corporate income taxes.
It would make it possible to end the IRS as we know it.
The Fair Tax makes our exported goods and services the most competitively internationally than any other tax system.
Phase 1 Enhanced Plan – Summary
Unites all tax payers so we all pay income taxes and no one pays payroll taxes
Provides the least incentive to evade taxes and the fewest opportunities to do so
Lifts a $430 billion dead-weight burden on the economy due to compliance, enforcement, collection, etc.
Is fair, neutral, transparent, and efficient
Ends nearly all deductions and special interest favors
Ends all payroll taxes
Ends the Death Tax
Features zero tax on capital gains and repatriated profits
Lowest marginal rates on production
Allows immediate expensing of business investments
Eliminates double taxation of dividends
Increases capital formation. Capital per worker drives productivity and wage growth
Capital formation will aid capital availability for small businesses
Features a platform to launch properly structured Empowerment Zones to revitalize our inner cities
We all know the Fed has tripled the money supply since 2008. They have been printing money out of thin air to finance the Obama spending machine. While true Fed reform that restores sound money may have to wait for my election, the best thing we can do now is to pursue policies that increase the DEMAND for dollars to help mitigate the risks associated with the increase in the supply.
Pro-growth economic policies equal a strong dollar policy
An issue with FairTax is how to transfer that 23% tax from every retailer in the USA back to the Federal government. That means a massively-upgraded monetary transaction network and upgraded communications networks, and it may take a couple of years to set up every retailer to make it easy to transfer the tax collected.
Not really much of an issue at all! 45 of the 50 states already have state sales taxes in place and the retailers there in would need two - at most three - new lines of code in their computer programs in order to deal with the fairtax and both (the retailers and the state) would be compensated for their troubles. The other five states would be slightly more difficult but not that much more so.
Armey and Gingrich suckered naive conservatives for twenty years with their phony “flat” income tax. It’s a political nonstarter. And they know it.
If you want the status quo, go ahead, support it. Because that’s all you will get.
But if you want liberty and prosperity, not just for ourselves but for our posterity, support the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment and an end to income taxes of any kind.
I hope not - but 999 does that. But the Fair tax does not do that - it even erases the income tax code completely and destroys all income tax records. That I can live with... as long as the amendment is rolling.
I do understand that. But when the prostitute, the pimp and the drug dealer buy goods and services today from a legitimate firm, they pay taxes. I'm quoting from the FairTax.org website:
Cobra64 wrote:
The Fair Tax is a consumption tax. There is no reporting. The tax is paid at the cash register. The pimp, prostitute, drug dealer ultimately pay when they buy goods and services from a legitimate firm... dentist, corner market, Sears...
Drug dealers, prostitutes and pimps already pay embedded taxes today when they buy goods and services from legitimate businesses.
Finally, the reality is that we already have both an income and a type of sales tax today. All of our U.S. produced goods and services are burdened with an “embedded” tax due to the cascading of income and payroll taxes paid by U.S. employers to the U.S. Treasury at every step of production. Of course, these costs are passed on to the ultimate payer, the customer. It’s fair to call these embedded taxes a “sales tax” because we pay it every time we buy any goods or services -- we just don’t see it.
The tax that they evade today is the tax on their income. This income is derived from sales of goods and services. Today, under the income tax system, they don't report their income on their 1040 tax forms. They don't file quarterly estimated tax forms and pay their income taxes or their self employment taxes. They get away with this, to a great extent, because their customers don't report money spent with them (with 1099 forms).
Under the FairTax, these people will be engaged in the retail sale of taxable property (new drugs or new marijuana or whatever) or taxable services (companionship and other "professional services"). Their customers will be responsible for paying the FairTax sales tax on these taxable goods and services, and the prostitute and the drug dealer will be responsible for collecting these sales taxes and providing a receipt to their buyers that complies with Section 509 of the Fair Tax bill. Of course they will not do this. Technically, under the FairTax law, if the buyer doesn't get a receipt showing the tax was paid, it's actully the buyer who is evading the tax. My point is the taxable transaction will not be reported and the tax won't be collected. The drug dealer and the prostitute also will not remit the sales tax on their sales in accordance with the FairTax law. And I doubt the buyers will report their purchases and pay the tax when they don't get a proper receipt, even though by not getting a receipt, the buyer/consumer is the one who is liable for the tax.
The same "underground economy" transaction that evades income taxation today will evade sales taxation under the FairTax. That's what the "underground economy" does. It evades taxation. The FairTax doesn't change this.
Your statement is true for businesses which sell taxable goods in the states with sales taxes.
Bigun wrote:
Not really much of an issue at all! 45 of the 50 states already have state sales taxes in place and the retailers there in would need two - at most three - new lines of code in their computer programs in order to deal with the fairtax and both (the retailers and the state) would be compensated for their troubles. The other five states would be slightly more difficult but not that much more so.
The FairTax also applies to basically all services. Many states don't charge sales tax on services at all, and no state taxes services as widely as the FairTax does. There are millions of businesses in service industries today who do not collect any sales tax and have no system in place for collecting and remitting sales taxes. This ranges from lawyers, doctors and accountants all the way down to landscape services, painters, roofers and pool cleaning services. In most states, none of these businesses collect and remit sales taxes.
Flat tax is the only “fair” tax. (1) It eliminates class warfare. (2) All citizens become equal in supporting America. (3) Every person needs to have a vested interest his country to truly be/feel a citizen.
At this point in time, I feel that the 50%+ people who don’t pay taxes should not vote.
I’m waiting for the Democrats to finally seize on this and harp on how the Republicans are against raising taxes for the wealthiest segment of the population and all for raising taxes on the lowest income segment of the population. How’s that going to play?
The Fair Tax folks have not done well at splainin’ this point. But the nrst does have drug dealers pay 100% of their tax burden when they purchase legal retail consumption. Not so under the income tax. The inc tax only has them pay business taxes [embedded] - which do not represent 100% of their tax burden.
So I think they should say the nrst captures _more_ taxes from the underground economy.
O c’mon. A dentist or accountant only need purchase a programmed cash register like any of the other gazillion service providers who do collect sales tax now.
lol
2) taxes become more transparent...
I will bet a dozen doughnuts that the next Repub majority Congress, majority Senate and President do not make any meaningful changes to the tax code. They may lower some rates and tinker with this and that, but no flat tax, no Fair tax. I want to be wrong, but the stupid party...
Just off the top of my head, the Fair Tax will give the Federal government an incentive to keep the tax rate low. If they raise it, people can control how much taxes they pay by how much they consume. There will be an immediate backlash if the tax rates change.
By my estimation, the economy will be rolling so hard that the Federal Government will be awash in cash anyway. They may not need to raise the rate.
MA can still have their sales tax.
Your last statement here is also absolutely false.
Under the income tax system we have today, the drug dealer's customer is paying income taxes on the money he earns. The recreational drug buyer spends "after tax" dollars on his purchases from the drug dealer. And the prostitute's john does the same, paying the prostitute with "after tax" dollars.
Principled wrote:
The Fair Tax folks have not done well at splainin’ this point. But the nrst does have drug dealers pay 100% of their tax burden when they purchase legal retail consumption. Not so under the income tax. The inc tax only has them pay business taxes [embedded] - which do not represent 100% of their tax burden.
So I think they should say the nrst captures _more_ taxes from the underground economy.
Where, under the FairTax, the john and the recreational drug purchaser don't pay any taxes on their income. Also, they don't pay any tax on their "underground economy" purchases either.
The FairTax shifts the taxation around the underground economy from the demand side to the supply side. That's all. The FairTax collects no additional taxes from the "underground economy." The same total transactions are taxed under both systems, and the same transactions, the "underground economy" or "black market" transactions evade taxation under both systems. The net gain for the FairTax from the "underground economy" is zero.
It's interesting that you zeroed in on the "rich" service providers, and the ones with actual offices, like the doctors, dentists and accountants.
Principled wrote:
O c’mon. A dentist or accountant only need purchase a programmed cash register like any of the other gazillion service providers who do collect sales tax now.
lol
Many of the businesses that will be affected by the FairTax are very small businesses in competitive environments. Buying a cash register isn't really in their budget. Also, for some of them, lugging around a cash register as they do their business will make life more difficult for them.
For just one example, I get my lawn mowed by a guy that rides his big mower around my neighborhood. He has a truck with his name on it, and he's legitimate, has a business license, is insured and is professional. But I live in a neighborhood where he has a lot of customers, and he parks his truck at the entrance to our neighborhood, rolls his mowers off the back and and he and his sidekick ride his mowers around, taking care of his customers. When they do my lawn, they knock on the door and I pay them (cash or check, depends on whether I have cash around). Are you telling me hat under the fair tax, my neighbors and I will need to pay enough more for our getting our lawns mowed so that our lawn guy can buy a cash register (or two)? and he'll need to carry it around on his mower, or maybe to install it in his truck and drive around the neighborhood to collect his money and give us all a Section 509 compliant receipt from his cash register?
Or, when I purchase services like lawn mowing (and roofing and house painting and pool cleaning and exterminator service and in home major appliance repair and ...), am I actually hiring "domestic servants" (a term which is referenced in the FairTax, but not really defined there). If that's the case, then we homeowners will be required to pay the FairTax on these services directly as "taxable employers?" The term "taxable employer" is defined, but refers to "domestic servants," which I don't believe is defined anywhere in HR25. (I would look myself, but Thomas.loc.gov is down right now for "scheduled hardware maintenance").
ping
Great post!
Great graphics!
Thanks!
You're a liar and a paid poster.
I didn't zero in on anyone - you made that up. YOU zeroed in on the "rich". I didn't even say that. YOU did. My post pointed out that people who don't currently collect sales tax can do so trivially.
You're all over the place talking about a zillion things b/c your goal isn't to argue the merits of the nrst, it's to keep the status quo.
The nrst is revenue neutral b/c by law it has to be. C'mon. We're wise to you.
A HAH HAHAHAHAAA!
Yes, common cents. Lawn services will carry cash registers on their tractors. And swipe machines on the weed-whackers.
Jeez you're posting stupid.
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