[ancient_geezer]

I saw nothing that seemed to provide for the taxing of federal government "consumption" or "capital expenditures" as was included by Mastromarco.

No "capital expenditures" are included in the sales tax base my Mastromarco, business or government. Capital expenditure is considered investment, not consumption. The same is true of the bill.

Table 1
Tax Base for National Sales Tax (billions of dollars)

Description of Taxable Item	Tax Base (1995)
Personal consumption expenditures	$4,924.9
Purchases of new homes	156.4
Improvements to single-family homes	73.9
Imputed rent on housing	-534.3
Additional financial intermediation services	53.0
Foreign travel by U.S. residents (one-half)	-26.4
Expenditures abroad by U.S. residents	-2.7
Food produced and consumed on farms	-0.4
State and local government consumption	682.6
State and local government gross purchases	159.1
Federal government consumption	453.8
Federal government gross purchases	62.7
Less: Education expenditures	-97.5
Plus: Expenditures in U.S. by nonresidents	73.1
NST Base	$5,978.2
Source: National Income Product Accounts, Survey of Current Business, August 1996.

[Deuce]

I went to the BEA - NIPA Tables that Burton and Mastromarco used. Table 3.7 has data that ties in with this. What they describe as gross purchases (a separate item from consumption) seems to best be approximated by the investment outlays entries. Otherwise, I can't tell exactly where they got their numbers.

Also the article talks of levying a payroll tax on government workers in the discussion of this issue. That does not appear to be in the bill.