Posted on 03/22/2002 11:56:14 PM PST by kattracks
Now all you have to figure is how you can sell it to Congress.
I'll go for the first step, to an NRST, and let the market,(i.e. consumer/voter) drive the taxs rate to optimum.
The drop in shelf price of goods & services is expected to be on the order of 20-30% within the first year,
What a bizarre and gross exageration SS/Medicare costs don't add up to 20-30% of production costs, let alone selling price of a product. You totally neglect business costs for raw materials, supplies, insurance, electric power, etc. etc. etc. And you sure as hell don't have any "embedded" taxes in all the imported crap we buy, how the hell do you think THOSE prices are gonna drop by 20-30%???
AS USUAL, you're spouting nothing but propaganda. Your NRST tax scheme is a hoax and a swindle.
In a competitive free market, there is no guarantee of either sales or profit. Thus there is no guarantee that there will be a Corporate Income Tax obligation to "pass along" to the consumer.
NRST advocates who insist that corporate income taxes are "embedded" in the sales price of a product are just plain wrong. This assumes that companies can dictate market price in order to cover any costs that they incur when price is actually determined by supply and demand in a competitive market. Any attempt to raise the product price to accomodate the income tax would have to overcome lower priced product from competitors who did not incompetently attempt to incorporate such "costs" in their pricing strategy. The result would be that the company that attempted to "pass along" the tax would actually lose sales volume, possibly even to the point of losing profitablility. Conversely, the lower priced competitors who did not attempt to "pass along" the tax would gain sales volume and enhance their profitability.
The skewed logic utilized by NRST advocates to claim that corporate income tax is paid by the consumer is completely bogus. To accept their convoluted logic is to deny how businesses actually operate in a competitive market. Further evidence of corporations' inability to "pass along" their income tax obligation is published every day in the business section of our nation's newspapers: "ABC Corporation fails to meet 3rd quarter expectations" or "XYZ Inc. incurs 2nd quarter loss". Once again, with future sales and tax obligations (if any) being unknown, it is IMPOSSIBLE for companies to "pass along" their income tax obligation to the consumer.
The Ivory Tower "experts" who concoct this theory are in denial of how business actually operate in a competitive free market. Their fundamental assumption that companies can dictate the market price of their product to accomodate income tax liability is fallacious and reflective of marxist influence.
At least part of the flaw/lie exposed in your little scam here is the repeal of payroll taxes...How will you guarantee 100% of wages as take home pay AND repeal the payroll tax?.....HMMM?
I seem to remember you being one of the many who make the claim that the employer portion of the payroll tax as part of the employee wage....which face are you speaking from now?
The major additional portion of price drops will come from reduction in tax compliance costs associated with both income and payroll tax sytems.
I seem to remember you being one of the many who make the claim that the employer portion of the payroll tax as part of the employee wage....which face are you speaking from now?
Employer portion of the payroll tax is at the cost of employee's gross income according to Walter Williams. However that does not translate into an automatic wage increase for everyone simply because the employer is realieved of that excise. The more likely form that the employers portion will be applied to is toward maintaining or achieving competitive advantage in the marketplace (e.g. price reductions directly or through productivity improvements) rather than wage or salary increases.
Productivity increases do happen to include the hiring of more highly skilled workers at higher wages away from your competitors. So yes there will be some unpredictable increase in wages for the more skilled workers from that viewpoint. Unfortunately that is a longer term effect than merely receiving ones negotiated gross wage that you are now due.
Touché.
What a bizarre and gross exageration SS/Medicare costs don't add up to 20-30% of production costs,
You are forgetting
1) cost of tax compliance at $0.65 for every dollar collected in revenue to the government Willie. Those costs reduced and compensated for under an NRST.
2) corporate income taxes and costs associated with compliance there.
altogether, a very definite drop of more than 20% will be realised depending on assumptions of just how much drop in compliance costs will occur. My assumption are half those to be expected for a $0.65 for dollar collected value determined by Payne.
Costly Returns
The Burdens of the U.S. Tax System
James L. Payne, '93Where does $1.00 cost you $1.65? On your tax return, that's where! James Payne demonstrates that for every tax dollar the IRS collects, we pay 65 cents more in compliance and other costs. This hidden financial burden is compounded by the arbitrariness, invasion of privacy, denial of civil rights, and other abuses of a coercive tax system.
Where Have All the Dollars Gone?
How the government robs Peter to pay him back.
By James L. Payne, Reason Magazine February '94When the overhead costs are added together, (24 percent compliance costs, 33 percent disincentive costs, and 8 percent other costs), they total 65 percent of tax revenue. Although future studies may come up with slightly different numbers, there is no doubt that the overhead costs of taxation are substantial. This means that every act of self-subsidy entails a significant waste. When the government takes a dollar from Peter to give it back to him later, there is a huge loss attached to the transaction.
Unfortunately, the bad news doesn't end there. Peter is never going to see this dollar, even if it is destined for him, because of the waste in the system for disbursing subsidies.
The Flat Tax; Hall & Rabushka, '95:
What the Income Tax Cost the American People
The science of estimating compliance costs and indirect economic losses is, as noted, relatively new, and findings differ widely. Payne, for example, estimated the total costs of the federal tax system in 1985 at $363 billion, or 65 percent of actual collections. Others have reached higher costs in some categories of compliance and lower costs in others.
***
Notes & References:
A comprehensive review of all the studies that attempt to measure the costs associated with the federal income tax appears in James L. Payne, Costly Returns: The Burdens of the U.S. Tax System (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1993). Payne summarizes the estimates of compliance costs that appear in the following studies: Joel Slemrod and Nikki Sorum, "The Compliance Cost of the U.S. Individual Income Tax System," National Tax Journal 37 (December 1984): 462–65; Arthur D. Little, Inc., Development of Methodology for Estimating the Taxpayer Paperwork Burden (Washington, D.C.: Internal Revenue Service, 1988), pp. III–23; James T. Iocozzia and Garrick R. Shear, "Trends in Taxpayer Paperwork Burden," in Internal Revenue Service, Trend Analyses and Related Statistics, 1989 Update (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989), p. 56; Annual Reports of the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service; and a variety of other IRS memoranda.
Touché.
One should at least wait to see what lies in the bushes as a response before predicting a score for the other team.
See reply #39.
Demonstrating ignorance of the other teams hand through premature display of enthusiasm can be embarrassing to one's own credibility.
Tax protest scams seem to invariably require blind faith.
Myself, I would rather do away with tax systems that require the private family to say anything to the government about income or profit, thus go for the NRST along with Alan Keyes so I can pay the tax anonomously and still know how hard my pocket book is really being hit by government.
So what's your poison in all this?
Should cost of government to the individual be proportionate to the benefit each derives vs one's contribution to society?
I don't trust studies because they are done by liberal universities. So it's my guess and I can vote my guesses if I want to. :^) My guesses are right more than wrong.
Even if it were true, I can guarantee a NRST rate would in principle be lower due to lower costs of compliance allowing greater growth. I don't believe it's 24%. Unfortunately it's what can be sold to Congress under, not what your or I might agree on.
Niether the NRST nor the low flat income tax will ever be sold to Congress so it doesn't matter.
The NRST as proposed in HR2525, is 23% of individual consumption. Investments & Used goods not taxed.
Already getting complicated.
The NRST's lowest and equilibrium point accounting for growth effects, could be approximately 20% if states and businesses were not reimbursed for collection expenses and all households did not receive povertylevel consumption allowence called for in the NRST to avoid exempting "necessity" goods from taxation.
I don't trust something that needs so much literature to explain. LOL
How is it not an intrusion on an individual's life to force him to document what he did or did not sell and to whom?
Now all you have to figure is how you can sell it to Congress.
It won't be sold to Congress and neither will the low flat income tax. People love to vote themselves money too much.
I'll go for the first step, to an NRST, and let the market,(i.e. consumer/voter) drive the taxs rate to optimum.
So if a car dealership opens in the Bahamas and begins to sell cars to American citizens minus any sales tax which would make these cars thousands of dollars cheaper, and then ferries them to Florida for pickup, you don't want to put a halt to that? Or would you have the government intrude on individuals lives and force them to disclose everything they bought and in which country they bought these things to force them to pay taxes on it?
How is it not an intrusion on an individual's life to force him to document what he did or did not sell and to whom?
First: there is no documentation required as to whom an item may be sold to.
Second: There is no documentation required as to what one does not sell.
Third: The Constitutional authority exists to tax individuals, both at state and national level. The issue is to limit the intrusion, as any form of taxation necessarily involves some intrusion. A retail sales tax is clearly less intrusive than other forms as it is imposed upon a retail business enterprise as opposed to the private individual.
Third: Under the proposed NRST businesses are compensated to collect and remitt the tax. There is no law to force one into acting an agent of the government in such capacity as there is no requirement under an NRST that any individual to engage in selling retail as opposed to inter-business sales or sales of used/antique items or engaging in occupations which are not required to collect such taxes.
It won't be sold to Congress and neither will the low flat income tax.
Correct so why bother to thow it out as red herring and wasting effort on debating something that does not garner even token support.
Or would you have the government intrude on individuals lives and force them to disclose everything they bought and in which country they bought these things to force them to pay taxes on it?
We already do and they are called tariffs. A retail sales tax is no more intrusive, and much less intrusive than an income tax which demands the reporting of all income and sources of such by every individual.
and force them to disclose everything they bought and in which country they bought these things to force them to pay taxes on it?
By the way, the proposed NRST's do not tax that which you own prior to its enactment in any case. So any concerns at this level is a mere hypothetical of no interest. The only reporting of goods brought into the country have impose no requirement greater than already exist under import laws currently on the books.
Or are you suggesting the import tariffs and their collection are somehow more intrusive than income taxes and thus should be done away with.
Niether the NRST nor the low flat income tax will ever be sold to Congress so it doesn't matter.
The NRST with supported bills in Congress and a growing constituency pushing for it is alot closer, than that strawdog low flat income tax you are throwing out.
Already getting complicated.
I don't trust something that needs so much literature to explain.
And you like an income taxes instead ROTFLM(_|_)O!!
I don't trust studies because they are done by liberal universities.
And you support an income tax? My will wonders never cease?
I don't know of any studies that have been done by liberal universites on this subject myself. I do know there are a few phd's in economics that happen to be employed in such universities that have done such studies independently and under contract. I also know of studies done by some very clearly conservative folks that support the same conclusions. In fact much of the matterial I use comes from opponents of the NRST to assure that the data is not skewed in favor of NRST support.
How about some studies from conservative foundations? Just as many of those exist in support of the NRST as well.
So it's my guess and I can vote my guesses if I want to. :^) My guesses are right more than wrong.
Any blindman feels the same way. Personally I prefer to be able to read the obvious road signs before driving over a cliff.
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