Point of sale times the number of transactions equals the degree of intrusion. With the combined load of the Feds and the States adding half-again the purchase price, you can bet your bottom dollar that people will avoid paying it. Cash and barter transactions will become more common. In order to enforce their take, the Feds would have to engage in not only illegal searches and seizures, but massive sting operations to get their cut. If you think the IRS is intrusive now, just wait until your "FareTax" induces a police state with revenue collectors everywhere deeming what constitutes barter or not.
Your statement might be accurate if it weren't for the fact the tax rate will be 23%, not 50% and that the prebate will reimburse people monthly for taxes paid on necessities up to the poverty level in order to lessen the burden on low income earners.
Typical FAREtax duplicity. There isn't a single other sales tax anywhere that isn't calculated as a fraction of the base transaction. Not one. Yet your FAREtax advocates calculate its impact as the fraction of tax AFTER it is assessed, a duplicitous practice at best. The actual rate is 0.23/(1-0.23) = 0.30 or 30%, as I said. Your second failing is failure to read: I said "(as they would in California)," meaning that the total sales tax would consist of the FAREtax hit, PLUS California's existing sales tax of 8.5% of the base transaction, PLUS the amount California would need to ADD because the lack of a 1040 would make a State income tax untenable. Hence, California would need to bump its State 8.5% sales tax to make up for lost income tax revenue. Given that the average marginal State income tax rate in California is now 12.5%, I swagged that the sales tax rate would have to rise to nearly 20% to cover both the existing sales tax plus the rate needed to make up for the now defunct State income tax. Hence, 30% Federal NRST + 20% SRST = 50% total sales tax, which is what I said above. Even if it was 5% less, it's still too much to keep people from cheating.
If you think for one minute people won't do everything they can to avoid a 50% sales tax rate, I've got news for you. As I said, look at the market for bootleg cigarettes and booze.
People will be far less likely to bootleg any product considering their purchasing power will increase since federal income taxes will no longer be deducted from their paychecks or dividend checks.
You people are something else. Never in human history have people been so overjoyed to know what they're actually paying for government that they take their fattened paychecks and willingly go find a government agent to pay at a kid's lemonade stand. You seem to think that the entirety of retail is at electronic cash registers.
So, how are they doing collecting that existing Federal tax on marijuana?
So your alternative is to keep in place a tax code that...
So, not only are you dishonest, but putting words in my mouth as a straw-man will get you ignored from now on, that is, unless I feel like rubbing your sanctimonious nose in your BS numbers again. G_d's system was an income tax, but it was only a 10% flat tax. Nor am I totally opposed to tariffs. I think sales taxes are fine as long as one can keep the real rate, State and Federal included, below 15%. Beyond that and people will cheat, in droves, no matter how much cash they've got. Hence, the real problem is the scope and cost of government, not the tax system. My focus is cutting spending and regulation for those operations not specifically listed in the Constitution because that is where our focus must be.