Nor have I seen anything in the MSM about Russia being on its way to the next step in their transition towards a visible and open sales tax system. Seems they are in the process of scrapping their VAT and going to a straight retail sales tax instead.
NOVISTI
9-29-2005
http://en.rian.ru/business/20050928/41534170.html
- MOSCOW, September 28 (RIA Novosti) -- Head of the Russian Presidential Administration's Expert Board told journalists Wednesday on the sidelines of an investment conference in Moscow that the new sales tax instated to replace VAT will not be introduced before 2009.
- "The projections have been made and the text (of the proposal) is ready," Arkady Dvorkovich said, referring to the proposals that will be submitted to the cabinet.
- VAT and sales tax are variations of turnover tax, but, whereas VAT is collected as a product moves down the line from producer to end consumer, sales tax is a consumption tax that is collected only once, at the point of purchase.
Is Russia followed by Europe, on its way to actually implementing the potential of National Retail Sales Tax only systems before us?
Seems like this is another "taking down of the Berlin Wall" except that the Russians are trying to get ahead of the game by beating us to it.
We'd best get busy and pass the FairTax into law to beat them to it. No point in being second on something like this when it is so beneficial to the economy.
If there is a single person in the MSM that understands the various tax schemes in use globally he/she has not outed himself. The good news is that the WSJ is reporting that the MSM is finally noticing the flat tax schemes sweeping the old USSR. At least it's a start. One can say that one must crawl before walking.