Flat tax we all pay the same rate. 9-9-9 we don't. The lower middle class suburbanite loses his deductions and gets a 9% income tax increase and a 9% sales tax increase. The inner city Empowerment Zone occupant doesn't pay that same rate, does not see his income tax go up.
As to 999, I have posted that I would rather see a standard deduction for income in the amount of that at the poverty line for everyone.
You are overlooking the fact that under 999 everyone would pay NRST. That is one of the reasons, after a lot of thought, I came to support that. Even people 100% on welfare would pay (return to the taxpayers) 9% when they swipe their EBT cards (the new way welfare is distributed — through electronic benefits transfer cards, now conveniently accepted at fast food joints, convenience stores and taco trucks, too!).
Further, the number of people who would be exempted under 999, as far as paying NO tax, would be quite small: only those whose income is at or below the poverty level. (Compare to the number of households that would be exempted after Perry’s standard deductions were applies.)
Everyone else would pay income tax, with those in an OZ paying one or a few percentage points less. In the scheme of things, this would not be enough to take away from the effectiveness of 999 as a whole.
Frankly, I doubt many cities would actually become OZ, because at least at first there would be too much political resistance toward giving up minimum wage laws and implementing right-to-work policies. So that internal struggle would have to rage on before a city such as Detroit even got to the point that it applied to be an OZ.
“Flat tax we all pay the same rate.”
Not under Perry’s plan, because it keeps in place the old tax code as well, including the old tax code’s incredible Leviathan of loopholes and shenanigans.
Further, under the flat tax we don’t “all pay.” It starts with what it calls “generous deductions.” These standard deductions are such that there might be many more households that pay NO tax than pay now. And certainly almost ALL “poor” people — not just those in any OZ — would pay NO income tax under the Perry plan.
All that could be a matter of degree, so to speak, but since, unlike the Cain plan, the Perry plan does not have a NRST, once people are exempted from paying income tax (and, again, under the Perry plan, almost ALL “poor” people would end up paying NO income taxes because of the standard deductions), those paying NO income taxes pay NO open and notorious taxes at all.
(Of course, everyone presently pays the about 20+% Fedzilla taxes embedded [i.e., “hidden”] in the present cost of consumer goods. Compared to the 9% open and notorious NRST tax everyone would pay under 999. The bottom line being: We cannot hold our Congress accountable so long as we continue to allow them to hide the taxes they burden us with.)