I already paid taxes on my savings. Switching to a sales tax would mean I get to pay taxes on that same money again. Yeah, sounds fair to me, not.
Then you should be very unhappy to learn that you get hit again for another 20-25% out of your purchases today under the income/payroll tax system.
The following article covers the mechanism on how the current Federal tax system propagates and is embedded into consumption expenditure.
DO YOU PAY YOUR INCOME TAX
AT THE SUPERMARKET?
by D. Sherman Cox J.D. L.L.M. Taxation
The 24% in the article considers only those factors actually paid to government out of imposititions on business in complying with the income, payroll, excise & tariff tax laws.
I refer you to the section of the following article about the Income/Payroll tax system and its impact on our economy "A. Hidden Upstream Taxes. " paragraph 39.
"[39] Dr. Dale Jorgenson, Chairman of Harvard University's Economics Department, believes that the price of goods and services are inflated by about 20 percent or more by upstream taxes consumers ultimately bear. In a recent paper Dr. Jorgenson estimated the built-in taxes contained in the price of goods and services. /22/ In the chart above, he quantified the hidden component of tax, estimating that producer prices would fall on repeal of upstream taxes an average of about 22 percent."
Looking at the accompanying chart, the range of values from industry to industry appears to be about 12-25%.
Economists Gary and Aldonna Robbins of the Texas-based Institute for Public Policy examined the case of dry cleaning a shirt, with a particular eye toward uncovering the hidden costs of taxes in price.
The Robbin's attributed over 33.6% of "consumer prices" to be due to federal taxation passed on to the customer.
The Federal Tax System
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=2125&sequence=0&from=1#pt1
From the Table 1 we may extract the proportionate contributions of each sector of taxes as they contribute to consumer price for the year 2000.
Those tax components which will not change prices as a consequence of enactment of HR2525
============================
Adjust for the approximate reduction of interest & cost of tax compliance (
Adjust for a conservative $800 billion cost of tax compliance, (The Flat Tax; Hall & Rabushka, '95,What the Income Tax Costs the American People: quoting James L. Payne estimates 65cents for each dollar of revenue collected).
Estimated change in consumption prices as consequence of enactment of a National Retail Sales Tax, repealing all business income and payroll taxes:
33.6*(1386.5/1945) = 23.9% reduction in consumption prices
Which more than verifies the Jorgenson empirical study of 22% fall in producer prices.
The two sources are in reasonable agreement, and I see 20-25% a reasonable value to expect retail prices to fall, not only for customers here in the United States, but in our exports as well making them far more competitive on international markets.
Adjust for a conservative $800 billion cost of tax compliance, (The Flat Tax; Hall & Rabushka, '95,What the Income Tax Costs the American People: quoting James L. Payne estimates 65cents for each dollar of revenue collected). Total tax related factors affecting consumption price = (800 + 586.5) = $1386.5billionsAG, we've been through this before. The $800 billion from Payne includes individual tax compliance cost (besides it's outdated and grossly overestimates the "costs" of compliance). Individual compliance costs have nothing to do with consumption prices. Your numbers are off dramatically. You know this, yet you still post it.