Posted on 10/09/2007 5:27:15 AM PDT by Man50D
Ron Petrucci's Sept. 24 letter addressing Charles Firth is right on a number of points. We have been running more than an $800 billion trade deficit. That can't go on for very long. Ron says we're a debtor nation and we are.
Our manufacturing continues to move overseas to "more tax friendly" locations. We can't exist by providing each other services. Picture everyone doing their neighbor's laundry. We need to produce products to exist.
What Ron neglected to say is that the reason for that migration is our tax system. Federal taxes and associated compliance costs comprise an average of 25.9 percent of prices of our goods and services. Imported goods and services arrive at our shores essentially tax-free, because most foreign governments encourage exports by rebating their taxes at their borders. We don't do that.
When we try to sell there, they add their taxes to our prices, so our goods and services end up bearing double taxes. American companies have a raw deal both ways. That's why they have trouble competing.
There is an answer, though in the form of HR 25, The Fair Tax Act. That bill is in the House ways and means committee. It is the most thoroughly researched tax bill ever.
For the second time, a group of noted economists recently wrote a letter to Congress and the president, urging them to pass it and sign it into law.
The bill already has more cosponsors than any other tax bill in 80 years. It is a grass-roots proposal. It will pass only if enough citizens support it and tell their representatives. If passed, the current federal tax system would be replaced by a national retail sales tax applied at the final retail sale and collected by the states.
Net retail prices paid would be about the same. Revenue raised would be about the same. Collecting a sales tax is much more efficient than collecting an income tax, it provides a steady revenue flow and everyone would pay.
It needs to pass now, though, before this president leaves office, because no first-term president will entertain changing the tax system, and Social Security will run out of liquid assets at about the end of the next president's first term.
Check the proposal out at www.fairtax.org
If you buy a boat in FL you can avoid the sales tax if your boat’s holding corporation is primarily offshore and you boat spends a specified amount of time outside the USA. IOW a quick trip to the Bahamas or British V.I.
It took YEARS for the industry to recover the talent pool of workers and tradesmen who simply left because the boat builders and servicers went out of the USA.
Don’t forget the luxury tax avoidance junkets that popped up. The old sea escape cruise line boomed during those years to avoid the idiotic luxury tax. Quick trip to the Caribbean to save thousands on you luxury items.
Other scam supporters indicated only “final products” would be taxed. Used would not be taxed. This just BEGS for a shell game sale for a nominal amount, with a real value at the USED tax free sale.
There are ample holes to drive a mack truck through this scam.
The FAIR TAX too simple for you to understand = we'd pay a federal sales tax which would be the same method we now pay state sales taxes. Lotta lobbyists petitioning for loopholes in our state sales tax - NOT
The same methods that avoid sales taxes on private boats will be applied to this inanity
Hmmm - interesting you should mention "boats" - a high end item. Makes one wonder if that isn't your OX that stands to get gored with the national sales tax = The very wealthy will not have all the loopholes to jump into but will really be paying their FAIR tax. (Hint: want a new luxury item like a boat? Buy a good second hand one: no tax. Your choice. )
And THAT is where the FAIRNESS comes in: WE get to choose what we buy that we will have to pay the taxes on. Buy a good used car instead of a new one (that depreciates dramatically as we drive it off the lot) and pay NO TAXES...WE decide. The gov't doesn't get to just grab our money and we have nothing to show for it.
WE do expect the very wealthy not to like having to finally pay their FAIR share - and to fight it. Ditto the folk who make their money off the current IRS system.
Those of us not in those categories have been on the wrong end of the stick long enough.
please, all big government democrats and a few RINOs.
you are just using marketing scams.
The First...
The Biggest...
By that standard Rangal’s legislation introduce the “most revolutionary” or “most innovative” even “most supported” if you ask democrats.
It is also interesting that fair scammers never mention how INFLATIONARY these sales tax scams are. A soon as businesses increase their prices to accomodate the new sales tax, there will be wage pressure. Inflation appears again.
Of course the introduction of this scam as an internet sales tax will just drive most all net business overseas. We could even have a similar situation with foreign “relay points” to have internet sales relayed through a foreign postal front in order to avoid the sales tax. (not unlike ships which have foreign flags and have to stop at a foreign port in order to avoid US regulations when going from US port to US port.)
The question addressed the comment that in America ‘the entire boat building industry disappeared’ which is bunk.
The point is that comments are made with no backup. Every comment made against the FairTax on FR is in the form of hot air. The FairTax itself is thoroughly researched and answers all questions but those that oppose it will not accept any objective analysis to support the FairTax. And many of the FairTax detractors have admitted on past threads that their business depends on the Income tax.
Anyone caught evading the NRST by bringing in a product bought overseas and having it fraudulently registered as previously owned will be prosecuted. A simple sting operation on foreign duplicity will be sufficient to open the can on all of their clients or shut them down from passing off bogus registrations. Each and every product brought into the USA will be assessed an excise tax.
The FairTax is orders of magnitude more manageable to enforce than the Income tax. It is much easier for criminals to evade the Income tax than it will be for them to evade the FairTax.
Your comments are in the same category as the others; no facts, no data, no research, just hot air commentary with no backup.
newsflash: in europe there are nations where a staw new sale is used to reduce sales taxes on new items.
There is no need to “buy new” if you just do a little paperwork and buy “used for a second”. Even if there is a time requirement, a contract for sale can still be drawn up.
It seems the fair tax scammers have never lived in the real world or had to deal with real world paperwork. It is like the pauper ecconomists who are telling us how to be rich.
The Fair Scam Tax would be better off hiring Tommy Vu or some other get rich infomercial pitchman.
We have a new entitlement bureacracy being proposed, and EASILY avoidable tax scheme for larger items, an EASILY avoidable tax scheme on smaller goods via straw sales, an onerous increase in government paperwork and intrusion in a business’s books and records, AND it turns all businesses into UNPAID tax collectors.
What USED to be a quarterly report now turns into a monthly report.
must be those rafts people get here from Cuba on.....
Each and every product brought into the USA will be assessed an excise taxIs that supposed to impress us?
Do you people just make this stuff up as you go along?...Of course you do. You're exposing yourselves as being more like lying Democrats just to sell your scam everyday .
If the plan is so great , why the constant lying?...HMMM?
Setting up things so one has to live like a pauper to be spared taxes .... Sounds like the present socialist-controlled Invcome Tax system to me. Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, excise taxes, luxury taxes, estate taxes, corporation taxes, estimated taxes, withholding taxes, etc., etc., etc. ad nauseum. A truly almost unimaginable hodgepodge of continuing attempts to deliberately impovrish the nation by punishing initiative, rewarding dependency and buying votes.
If that's what you and the other twisters here like, you are certainly welcome to it. But, don't whine when someone pegs you for what you truly are -- either ignorant, liars, totally selfish, totally socialist, or totally stupid -- singly or any combination thereof.
Uh huh...
Nice sales pitch...
That would be corporate taxes. Many still don’t pay individual taxes, which the Fair Tax would correct.
If you want to keep the IRS you need to defend their method of extortion.
The vast majority of corporations are small business enterprise subchapter S corporations.
it was created to end double taxation. The corporation does not pay any taxes on the profits because it all passes through to the individual. The individual addresses it on their own income tax.
Nice try.
Xenu would be proud.
As I explained before, many seniors already pay taxes on their retirement income including SS, so that won’t wash.
How does “housing” differ from “existing units” ? All would be subjected to tax, same as now. What’s your point ?
No tax benefits everyone - the question is, which tax method distorts the market less. The response is, obviously, the fair tax.
The tax code now acts as a redistributionist scheme for businesses. It favors the home/mortgage industries and “discriminates” against the insurance industries, as just one example. Why should mortgage interest get a deduction where homeowner’s insurance does not ?
A fair tax favors nothing over anything else - it is “neutral” as per industry.
let’s say that a business pays 40% tax on an item. if you eliminate that tax, do you reallyl think that they will automatically reduce their pricess by the 40%??? .... Do you really think, given these conditions that it is hardly likely that prices will drop by the 40%? If you can't come up with a better analysis of what you think might happen than that -- give it up. That is so miserably incomplete as to be laughable.
Better luck next time.
You are forgetting this thing called "competition". Prices seek a natural level unless distorted by government intervention as in taxes and licensing/franchising. Cable/telecom companies are the ultimate poster children for why competition works.
let’s say that a business pays 40% tax on an item. if you eliminate that tax, do you reallyl think that they will automatically reduce their pricess by the 40%??? .... Do you really think, given these conditions that it is hardly likely that prices will drop by the 40%? If you can't come up with a better analysis of what you think might happen than that -- give it up. That is so miserably incomplete as to be laughable.
Better luck next time.
Ah, thanks. Owns an H&R Block franchise maybe ?
I have an accountant friend who will love it when the IRS goes away, because she’ll just shift to setting up corporate accounting systems.
avoidance is not illegal.
avoidance is part and parcel of accounting.
To argue that tried and true methods of avoiding sales taxation is delusional and absurd.
Then you should KNOW about overseas corporations, they you should KNOW about keeping your boat away enough time to not be considered a new purchase.
We still have a buggy whip industry, it is just not as big as it used to be.
It is physically impossible to track all the sales bought elsewhere. It is not going to happen period.
The feds are not going to be bothered then as today with microscopic sales. More expensive items will not be detectable enough. There is no way to know if an item is new or used.
In addition some items will not be taxed as a matter of policy. For example unset diamonds/gems are duty free into this country. That will continue.
The fair tax scam is too loophole filled, too disruptive and just plain not thought out to be a viable alternative to the IRS.
You are dreaming in technicolor if such sting operations would be needed or necessary. All avoidance methods are done by the book out in the open.
The fair sales tax scam is just extending the mistake of 1991 into the entire american ecconomy instead of one segment.
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