Posted on 04/22/2003 10:40:02 AM PDT by sheltonmac
You've made the case quite well.
All of that utterly non-productive stupidity would disappear into history under the NRST.
Me too, my friend--me too! :-(
How in the heck do you compete with them now? Answer? You don't! They don't have the costs of our taxes in the price of their products currently. Ours do. Under the NRST, that would be reversed. Why can't you see that?
Tariffs would accomplish this nicely.
No argument, not in a perfect world--one in which the federal government was operating under truly constitutional constrictions. But that is not reality. You want to go from point 'A' directly to point 'Z'--but that is not politically feasible.
Let's get the tax system simplified, in a form that is utterly visible to ALL of the American people. Then we can begin to make the argument that the rate is too high, and spending is beyond what the Constitution allows. All Americans will then be united in the only tax debate that will be left on the table--reducing the rate.
The way things are now, the politicians have the mechanisms to divide and conquer--which they have fine-tuned for the last 50 years. This plan is the only one in existence that has a prayer of taking that control away from them.
| especially when a national revenue could be had by requiring foreign nations to pay for the privilege of doing business on American's soil!
This is the third article I've run into tonight that was so full of canal water that I had to stop reading, lest my brain be fried by all the moron particles emanating from the screen. |
Man, you do have a way with words!
I think the canal has been backed up for awhile too... ;-)
There's one myth. Another from this article is that the external tax was the only tax the first Congresses imposed. Whisky, anyone? Or for-hire carriages? These and other products and services were taxed during the 1790s.
As for duties paying for government, it never was so. Internal taxes historically have been a large part of government revenues. As of 1905, import duties paid for barely half the government.
As I see every single day, people contort their money around the tax code.
Are you saying the tax cost here is in excess of the differential labor cost here vs. slave labor?
No argument, not in a perfect world--one in which the federal government was operating under truly constitutional constrictions. But that is not reality. You want to go from point 'A' directly to point 'Z'--but that is not politically feasible.
Why not, it happened a little over 200 years ago?
The way things are now, the politicians have the mechanisms to divide and conquer--which they have fine-tuned for the last 50 years. This plan is the only one in existence that has a prayer of taking that control away from them.
If you believe politicians are going to voluntarily give you the power to prevent them from satiating their own greed, you need a head check.
Me, I like buying JDAMs, no matter how they fund them.
I'm saying that you are ignoring the effects of our current system, and ignoring the fact that the NRST plan is the only one in existence that puts us on the road to solving the problems.
Why not, it happened a little over 200 years ago?
Are you saying that there is no solution short of armed revolt? I disagree. But I will say this: NRST advocates are the only ones who have come up with true reform that isn't just more of the same--and which is at the same time politically doable.
If you believe politicians are going to voluntarily give you the power to prevent them from satiating their own greed, you need a head check.
So you are a fatalist. Not me. I believe we have the positive solution within our grasp if we only have the courage to make it happen.
On to whom is the tax burden shifted for the, say, 10s of millions of dollars in corporate income tax a large corporate facade in this country, with manufacturing in another country, no longer has to pay?
If you buy it in this country, any tax remitted by a corportation to any government, is paid by the american citizen who purchase the goods or service.
If someone in another country buys the goods and services, that citizen pays the tax.
In the final analysis all costs, all taxes are passed onto the customer. Taxes are remitted out of sales revenues there is nowhere else they can come from. All taxes get passed down to the individual citizen one way or another.
The paper entity and legal fiction known as a "corporation" or business organization is incapable of paying taxes.
So true, and so sad.
The productivity lost to this tax code is a crime.
Please bear in mind that the FAIR tax has a rebate mechanism that will require individual citizens to register and be tracked. Because the rebate mechanism involves the actual payment of money to people, enforcement will be needed to prevent cheating (e.g., registering children you don't have, double registration, registering the dead, etc.). The administration of taxes by state governments is a great idea but it could be applied to nearly any tax plan, including a flat income tax.
No tax can operate without enforcement at some level, the NRST places enforcement closer to the local level where the police power rightfully belongs, and limits the scope to sales activities as opposed to individual reporting of income.
How will the FAIR tax prevent abuse of the rebate mechanism if it doesn't include individuals in its scope? Again, I wholly agree that tax enforcement should be farmed out to the states but, again, that could be done with any tax.
I wrote, "with respect to services, it would be easy enough to simply not declare transactions because there will be no clear-cut way to track, say, how many haircuts a barber gave or how many lawns a lawn service mowed if the transaction is cash."
The primary difference from the income tax situation being, two people must be in agreement to keep the transaction secret.
In the income tax situation, multiple people must be in agreement, as well, because that income has to come from somewhere. If an employee earns income illegally or under the table, someone is still giving them that money. But I think you are missing the point.
I cut hair. I give 200 haircuts a month for $10 each. I charge $2.50 in tax and put it on the receipt, so I collect $500 in taxes. I tell the government that I gave 100 haircuts and keep $250 of the taxes. Even if 100 of my customers come forward and say, "Gee, I think he is cheating on his taxes because he cut my hair," I could say, "Yup, and I paid taxes on 100 haircuts." And this doesn't even go into tips, which are already a big problem. Do they appear on a receipt? Will they be taxed as part of the sale price?
Under the NRST, the seller is at risk for not remitting the tax, the purchaser has minimal risk. That seller had better hope that everyone who knows of his transactions like him, and are not state revenue agents.
If this were so effective, there wouldn't be any sales tax evasion, motor fuel tax evasion, cigarette tax evasion, or alcohol tax evasion. There is. Quite a bit of it. And unless the state revenue agents are constantly auditing small businesses down to the line item level, they will be hard pressed to detect if a small business is under reporting their sales and hiding taxes. Indeed, high cigarette and motor fuel taxes have created a black market for otherwise legal commodities. And remember that customers have a huge incentive to not report cheats because they will probably be paying less money for the tax free goods, too.
Small businesses on the otherhand do about 20% of the dollar volume, even if half of those misrepresent their sales that becomes only a 10% tax compliance problem as opposed to 15-20% under the income/payroll tax situation today.
Does this include services as well as goods, which will also be covered by the FAIR tax? And remember that tax cheats will be able to offer goods at a substantially cheaper price, thus increasing their market share. This is exactly what happened with the motor fuel tax evasion -- the cheats were selling their diesel at up to 40 cents less per gallon.
Secondly, if one is motivated to not collect taxes from customers, nor remit them to government, one can deal in goods and services outside the new retail sector, sell goods an services to businesses, sell used goods, or work for a company etc. No reporting to the state in those situations.
If this is true, then this creates an even wider door for evasion. If you have tax exemption certificates (which are already abused, by the way), it becomes possible to buy goods under the guise of it being a business purchase and silently convert the purchase to personal use. Because of "good faith" rules, a seller need not collect taxes of they are presented with a certificate that looks legitimate. Not only would there be a healthy market in fake business IDs but businesses could purposely be very accepting of any ID that looks plausibbly legitimate to get a sale. The analog here is fake IDs and liquor stores. Could the government make this sort of evasion difficult? Yes. But it wouldn't be easy or cheap and they would invariably involve technology and/or record keeping that would benefit large retailers over small business owners.
Finally, by its very nature must remain a small non-growth enterprise to avoid detection under the NRST. With the associated risks plus limited potential black markets will not be a very large portion of the economy.
Why? If the government isn't tracking income, how would it know where all of your money is coming from?
Note that I do believe these enforcement problems can be solved. I simply don't think that solving them will be easy or automatic. Talk to your state's taxation department about enforcement problems with their existing sales tax. Those problems will only get worse if the tax rate tops 20%, as they have with motor fuels and cigarettes.
I see no problems solved. The government still confiscates what it wants.
Are you saying that there is no solution short of armed revolt? I disagree. But I will say this: NRST advocates are the only ones who have come up with true reform that isn't just more of the same--and which is at the same time politically doable.
Tell us how this is even politically "doable" when you know the political parasites will never give you such power over them.
So you are a fatalist. Not me. I believe we have the positive solution within our grasp if we only have the courage to make it happen.
I prefer "Realist". Lots of dreamers have all kinds of possible solutions but no practical plan to make them broach reality. How will you get the politicians to renounce their greed?
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Oh, right. The tax wasn't passed on to American consumers in the price of the goods, it was paid by Magic Foreigners! How wonderful!