Your answer:
Far too much...[it]is made up as a combination of fuel excise taxes, state and federal...all up and down the line of production chain...[in other words, we can't tell].
So what exactly is your point?
The point:
1) A "pure" retail sales tax becomes a VAT eventually, for reasons I outlined in a previous post.
(2) A VAT is an invisible and insidious tax. Just like gas taxes, you do not know how much of the cost of a product you purchase consists of taxes. The Government will tax the manufacturers' or the shippers' "added value," which is opaque and obscure.
(3) The point is, we just like we don't know what the tax on gasoline is, we won't know the VAT tax rate. Taxes will sneak up on us in the dead of the night, and we'll wake up with a Euro style social state.
The point:
1) A "pure" retail sales tax becomes a VAT eventually, for reasons I outlined in a previous post.
The reasoning you previously posted was invalid both in example(i.e. EU taxes as I have pointed out) and in fundumentals, as we already have the VAT like taxes to contend with now. The NRST corrects that situation by providing a fully visible alternative.
Just because American's in the future may allow government to possibly return to a VAT or VAT equivelant situation is not a valid reason to not enact the NRST now for ourselves. You offer only an excuse for inaction and retaining the status quo, and that is an insufficient argument.
(2) A VAT is an invisible and insidious tax. Just like gas taxes, you do not know how much of the cost of a product you purchase consists of taxes.
No argument and that is why we need to do away with like taxes now.
The Government will tax the manufacturers' or the shippers' "added value," which is opaque and obscure.
The "Government" is us. If we allow them to sometime in the future, how is that an argument for not instituting an NRST today to achieve what we can? The "Government" can do alot of things as long as we let them or encourage them, thats up to us and the kind of representation we choose to put in place now isn't it.
(3) The point is, we just like we don't know what the tax on gasoline is, we won't know the VAT tax rate.
That describes now. Not the situation under an NRST.
Taxes will sneak up on us in the dead of the night, and we'll wake up with a Euro style social state.
"Eternal Vigilence" and exercising or responsibilities as citizens is the key to that. That still is not a reason to not implement a fully visible NRST now.
It's your previous post that is not cogent.