Posted on 04/15/2016 10:56:53 PM PDT by Hanna548
Make no mistake here. Cruz is proposing a VAT add-on to the existing personal income tax system.
I agree with your assessment entirely.
Revenue projections like those are nearly meaningless anyway. Too many unknown factors at this point.
Personally, I’d favor an amendment which says Congress can’t spend more than what was taken in last year.
Yes, I understand you want a subjectively fair model.
I don't. I want objective fairness. Progressive feelings are always in my wallet.
Just by way of reference, the U.K. doesn’t add VAT to most foodstuffs, only the “non essential” luxury products.
What I’m talking about is the people who use legal tax avoidance by paying say $200,000 to get a reduction in taxes. If they’d only have to pay $100,000 on the flat tax, they’d do it. Oil and tax leasing plans would suffer perhaps. Oh well.
And I wasn’t talking just about people who pay none (some hedge funders) but people who pay some in other tax reducing ventures who may find it more profitable for them to pay the flat tax.
Do you not realize that, as it is, the consumer shoulders the entire tax burden? Businesses don't pay taxes, they collect taxes. They price their product to cover the taxes they must submit.
In the end, the consumer must shoulder the total tax burden.
>>I like Trump’s tax plan. He lowers taxes for everyone, cuts out a lot of the deductions and loop holes and makes the hedge fund guys pay too, which they are not now.
I like that one too. But under Cruz’s plan, hedge fund guys pay the flat tax as well.
The one thing I don’t like about the Cruz plan is the mortgage deduction and the charity deduction - that’s just gov’t ‘steering’. Same for child deductions. Dr. Carson’s plan eliminated all of them as well, plus there was no ‘basement’ limit - everyone pays something.
>>I agree with your assessment entirely.
Revenue projections like those are nearly meaningless anyway. Too many unknown factors at this point.
Personally, I’d favor an amendment which says Congress can’t spend more than what was taken in last year.
A flat tax that was hard to increase - ie supermajority to increase (eg. under WWIII) would eliminate half of the lobbyists. Those looking for tax breaks. Congressmen would be able to say, sorry, that’s something of the past now.
Same (similar) would be true of a balanced budget amendment on the spending side. Sorry, we have to balance the budget now. So no earmarks, etc. again lowering the lobbyist population.
>>Until the democrats inevitably get control of congress and then the other taxes come back ....
BTW, that could be said about ANYONE’s plan, not just Cruz’s.
“BTW, that could be said about ANYONE’s plan, not just Cruz’s.”
Yes it can which is why we do not need to add another type of tax for them to abuse?
>>Yes it can which is why we do not need to add another type of tax for them to abuse?
They’re pretty good at creating their own new taxes - obamacare, eg. If they wanted a VAT tax they could have gotten one before the 2010 election.
Which type of taxes won't they raise up, up, up? For crying out loud, we have the highest corporate tax rate in the civilized world. And, of course, me and you pay that in the price of our products today.
The point of consumption based taxes is that EVERYBODY pays. Everybody gets hurt. Objective fairness.
We will never curtail spending as long as liberals and misguided conservatives keep trying to shelter their favored folks or favored products from the pain from out-of-control spending.
It drives me nuts when people like GWB brag that they took more people off the federal income tax. About half now pay net zero federal income tax. That is the opposite of fairness.
What you describe regarding the TV tax above is essentially using your personal subjectivity to institute a 'sin' tax. Those are always morally wrong and unfair objectively speaking.
Subjectivity is a corruption of true fairness. By definition.
There is a reason Lady Justice wears a blind fold. To thwart the evils of subjectivity.
What I always tell liberals is that if you just can't stop from wrongly thinking it is the governments' job to pick winners and losers, then for God's sake at least do that on the spending side. Let us have an objective tax system for once. Fair, clean and simple. And, more importantly to a strong economy - it's predictable.
So how precisely is Cruz’s 16 percent tax different from the current 35% tax. Does Cruz’s tax not expense anything, meaning he charges the tax on ALL revenues. If that’s the case, I can see how that would work like a VAT.
I am reminded of the Vulcan saying;”Only Nixon could have gone to China”
The democrats could not ever get a VAT tax passed without destroying the party.
If the Republicans pass it for them they have cover.
You burned coal ? Well, the value of the cleanup has to be added in right up front because that's labor expended as a result of mining coal. Burning gasoline in your car ? Well, car owner has to pay for the labor lost to society because of air pollution because it's an indirect use of labor due to gasoline. Don't forget the cost of bathing ducks that has to be included in the mere moving of petroleum since that labor, therefore value, and has to be added when it arrives at the port. All sorts of hypothetical costs become real, taxable, "increases in value" and/or labor content a value can be put on.
It 's endless, and if you think the same gang that lords over the immense tax code would do anything less than an even worse maze of of paper you're nutz. A VAT requires a large tax machine to determine the details and Cruz knows that whether he claims something to the contrary or not. Politicians love a VAT tax because it allows them to bestow favors and punishments without anyone noticing anything and if they do, well, it's just a percent here and a quarter percent there on this one type of goods we had miscalculated in light of changing circumstances.
A VAT tax doesn't do what's claimed for it but is the Holy Grail for Globalists. Period.
The only thing close to what they claim a VAT tax would do is a national sales tax rather than an income tax with exemptions on basic food and clothing like Ohio and Pennsylvania once had. What those States have now I don't know, but at one time work clothes and basic clothing weren't taxed but dress clothes were. Same with food. Pasta, Oatmeal, rice, hamburger, I don't remember the list, but basics weren't taxed while dry cereals for kids, most frozen foods, ice cream, and so on were as they were a convenience or luxury, not a necessity.
Pat Buchanan has a couple of succinct chapters in The Great Betrayal, read the whole book, especially those chapters. There are whole books about how bad VAT has been for Europe, look em' up if what Buchanan says isn't convincing.
Globalist Cruz is nothing but an evil CuboCanadian SPOILER
for the DNC. Cruz is in bed with Team Romney which
supplies money for his blackmail, media payoffs, corruption,
and of course, his Cruz’s slanderous whores, including
his Band of Eight.
He at the very least should have known basic Finance 101 and Econ 101. I just think he made a compromise with the Wall Street backers and trying to pull wool over ‘simple folks’, thanks to Fai Mao's excellent explanation.
How can a country with almost no tariffs like the USA even consider a VAT? It is suicide.
Manufacturing always passes on costs to the customer unless it is labor costs. Then they close everything down uproot entire communities and move their production to the third world. Never understood that...
Other costs could also sink the viability of a business too. Labor is one of the few that still has alternatives.
After 20 years of wage stagnation and private sector unionism decline into oblivion that rings hollow. Plain BS.
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