Posted on 11/03/2004 10:42:24 AM PST by tgusa
"I'm not exactly sure how big the national sales tax is going to have to be, but it's kind of an interesting idea that we ought to explore seriously," the president said. The next day administration officials said Bush was not considering such a reform.
John Kerry's campaign quickly condemned a national sales tax, and Bush for potentially supporting it.
“If [Bush] has his way, every trip to the supermarket will feel like a visit to H&R Block and every day will be April 15. And now that this plan has been exposed, George W. Bush is trying to mislead the public into thinking it was just an off-the-cuff comment," Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said in an Aug. 12 statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I must have missed it. Where did you establish that 22% number and where was it compared to actually collections?
And if average prices only fall 3% due to embedded taxes, doesn't that mean that actual pay-at-the-register prices will rise by 25%? How would that impact sales? And the entire US economy?
You're so antagonist to not acknowledge that it's and example and not a factual percentage of embedded tax on a loaf of bread I won't waste my time on you. Why should I?
You're so antagonist to not acknowledge that it's and example and not a factual percentage of embedded tax on a loaf of bread I won't waste my time on you. Why should I?
Isn't your entire support based on the 22% estimate of embedded taxes? What if it is WRONG? Would you rather find that out AFTER you passed the bill?
Don't you have any faith in your numbers?
Faith is for wimps. :) I trust Dale Jorgenson's research. THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF FUNDAMENTAL TAX REFORM
Since I'm in a charitable mood I'll tell you that not every product has exactly 22% of embedded tax -- twenty-two percent is a rough average. Some items it's 40% or more, other items it's 10% or less.
I think the part he was referring to would be the costs of collection.
How can you call this tax "voluntary" vs. the income tax? Is buying food more voluntary than having a job?
It's not "big government", it's smaller govenrment.
It's not one size fits all, there are lots of different prebate sizes
It's not "for the poor", it's for every family who has a valid SSN and wants to receive it
And who said it was "such a good idea"? You made that up.
ANd you still need to learn to work with %s.
That's why they don't do it that way.
Yes.
Where did you establish that 22% number...
It is well established in the research. Links have been provided numerous times.
And if average prices only fall 3% due to embedded taxes,...
Yes, you missed it. Where did 3% come from - just made it up?
No. You're wrong. It's the argument of dozens of experts in taxation in economics and taxation.... PhDs, LLMs.
It's your argument that is unsupported. Nice try.
a) Be refunded in cash an amount equal to their savings as of the date of enactment times the new retail tax rate, or
b) get scrip in the same amount as described in a), negotiable only for paying the NST.
States can hire someone else to collect tax for them. But since they'll be paid hansomely for remitting, my guess is the states will choose to do it.
If not, maybe Halliburton will do it? he he
The thinking is that:
a) necessity spending is not taxed
b) discretionary spending is taxed but is voluntary
hence you can choose to pay tax or not....
FWIW
If I'm not mistaken the states get 1/4 of one percent ( .0025)that they remit to the feds.
My take on the voluntary perspective is juxtaposition to gun to the head, threat of jail and financial ruin the IRS imposes on people.
What part of the government stealing a portion of my life at the point of a gun do you not get?
I want either a flat tax or a NST, but I want something done right away about the tax burden we shoulder. It's well beyond anything the Founders had to contend with with the Brits and their tea and stamp taxes.
No, it is just well quoted - it is not established, confirmed, validated, ... it's just a good number for you to lie with.
Yes, you missed it. Where did 3% come from - just made it up?
No, I quoted it last year and told you where it came from. Calculate it yourself if you want to know the facts and have the guts to deal with them.
No. You're wrong. It's the argument of dozens of experts in taxation in economics and taxation.... PhDs, LLMs.
Wrong. One man at one time made up that one number. If idiots believe it or sycophants and crooks need it, it gets quoted and recycled again and again. Count how many people voted for Kerry a real life example of the same phenomenon.
You are correct but the Supreme Court also defined income - see if this sounds like your income.
"Income within the meaning of the Sixteenth Amendment and the Revenue Act, means 'gain'... and in such connection 'Gain' means profit...proceeding from property, severed from capital, however invested or employed, and coming in, received, or drawn by the taxpayer, for his separate use, benefit and disposal... Income is not a wage or compensation for any type of labor." Stapler v U.S., 21 F Supp 737 AT 739
Of course it doesn't for you have improperly quoted Stapler, both with respect to context, in part, as well as adding to it.
Stapler v US is only a District Court Case not a Supreme Court Case. Furthermore you have incompletely quoted it distorting its discussion and findings concerning only whether value of improvement to rented property by a renter can be taxed as income to the landlord.
Worst of all you have added the statement "Income is not a wage or compensation for any type of labor." as a quote, a statement not to be found anywhere in that decision.
The full text of the decision can be found here:
Staples v. U. S., 21 F.Supp. 737 (1937)
The ruling definition of income as it stands today, according to the Supreme Court stands as referenced within Staples:
Stratton's Independence, LTD. v. Howbert(1913), 231 U.S. 399:
- "'[I]ncome' may be defined as the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined, and here we have combined operations of capital and labor. As to the alleged inequality of operation between mining corporations and others, it is of course true that the revenues derived from the working of mines result to some extent in the exhaustion of the capital. But the same is true of the earnings of the human brain and hand when unaided by capital, yet such earnings are commonly dealt with in legislation as income."
And in fact The Supreme Court stated specifically about salaries and wages etc.
Lucas v. Earl(1930), 281 U.S. 111:
- "The Revenue Act of 1918 approved February 24, 1919, c. 18, 210, 211, 212(a), 213(a), 40 Stat. 1057, 1062, 1064, 1065, imposes a tax upon the net income of every individual including 'income derived from salaries, wages, or compensation for personal service ... of whatever kind and in whatever form paid,' 213(a). The provisions of the Revenue Act of 1921, c. 136, 42 Stat. 227, 233, 237, 238, in sections bearing the same numbers are similar to those of the above."
- "There is no doubt that the statute could tax salaries to those who earned them "
Following up later in in the same year as Staples, 1937, as regards the taxing of employments:
Charles C. Stewart Machine Co. v. Davis (1937), 301 U.S. 548:
- The tax, which is described in the statute as an excise, is laid with uniformity throughout the United States as a duty, an impost, or an excise upon the relation of employment.
- "But natural rights, so called, are as much subject to taxation as rights of lesser importance. An excise is not limited to vocations or activities that may be prohibited altogether. It is not limited to those that are the outcome of a franchise. It extends to vocations or activities pursued as of common right."
- Employment is a business relation, if not itself a business. It is a relation without which business could seldom be carried on effectively. The power to tax the activities and relations that constitute a calling considered as a unit is the power to tax any of them. The whole includes the parts. Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U.S. 249, 267 , 268 S., 53 S.Ct. 345, 349, 350, 87 A.L.R. 1191
All reflecting the original findings as regards tax on trades, employments and vocations from Pollock:
POLLOCK v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO., 158 U.S. 601 (1895):
- "We have considered the act only in respect of the tax on income derived from real estate, and from invested personal property, and have not commented on so much of it as bears on gains or profits from business, privileges, or employments, in view of the instances in which taxation on business, privileges, or employments has assumed the guise of an excise tax and been sustained as such."
- "If that[rents from land] be stricken out, and also the income from all invested personal property, bonds, stocks, investments of all kinds, it is obvious that by a r the largest part of the anticipated revenue would be eliminated, and this would leave the burden of the tax to be borne by professions, trades, employments, or vocations; and in that way what was intended as a tax on capital would remain, in substance, a tax on occupations and labor. We cannot believe that such was the intention of congress."
- "We do not mean to say that an act laying by apportionment a direct tax on all real estate and personal property, or the income thereof, might not also lay excise taxes on business, privileges, employments, and vocations. "
- Our conclusions may therefore be summed up as follows:
First. We adhere to the opinion already announced,-that, taxes on real estate being indisputably direct taxes, taxes on the rents or income of real estate are equally direct taxes.
Second. We are of opinion that taxes on personal property, or on the income of personal property, are likewise direct taxes.
Third. The tax imposed by sections 27 to 37, inclusive, of the act of 1894, so far as it falls on the income of real estate, and of personal property, being a direct tax, within the meaning of the constitution, and therefore unconstitutional and void, because not apportioned according to representation, all those sections, constituting one entire scheme of taxation, are necessarily invalid.
- Mr. Justice WHITE, dissenting.
16. The injustice of the conclusion points to the error of adopting it. It takes invested wealth, and reads it into the constitution as a favored and protected class of property, which cannot be taxed without apportionment, while it leaves the occupation of the minister, the doctor, the professor, the lawyer, the inventor, the author, the merchant, the mechanic, and all other forms of industry upon which the prosperity of a people must depend, subject to taxation without that condition.
Finally,
"There is a clear distinction between 'profit' and 'wages' and compensation for labor CANNOT be regarded as profit within the meaning of the law. The word 'profit', as ordinarily used, means the gain made upon any business or investment--a different thing altogether from mere compensation for labor." Oliver v. Halstead, 86 S.E. Rep. 2d 859
Is a state court case, and not applicabl, nor does it have any authority in regard to Federal income taxes r the 16th amendment or the definition of income as regards the application of federal law.
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