[ancient_geezer]

A 20% revenue tariff could allow American business to flourish tax free.

2001 imports goods & services = 1,167.2 + 215.8 = $1,183.0 billions

Including payroll(1/2 of SS/Medicare) taxes? That 20% only covers corporate income portion of the taxes paid in the nation, assuming the price and volume of imports remained constant on impostion of such taxes. The reality would be about 4% lower prices on domestic goods increasing volume there at the expense of 20% increase in foreign goods an services with decreasing volume.

The net effect would tend towards:

Little in the way of taxes collected from a dwindling import sector.

Exports dwindling for the introduction of trade barriers raised in reaction by other nations.

No taxes collected from business.

Consequent pressure for even heavier burden on individual income and payroll taxes and a perpetuation of an even more aggressive IRS.

Doesn't look like much of a solution for the average citizen to me.

[Willie Green]

Doesn't look like much of a solution for the average citizen to me.

Since when are you concerned with the average citizen anyway?

Posing as "tax reform", the NRST (HR 2525) also represents a "land grab" where business interests are favored over individuals purchasing for their own use:

• A family purchasing their own new home for $200,000 pays NRST at a tax-included 23% rate. This means that of the $200,000 paid, $154,000 goes to the seller, and the Gov't receives $46,000 in tax.

• A landlord/investor can exploit the business exemption of NRST and purchase the same new single family dwelling tax free as a rental investment for only $154,000. Tenants pay NRST on rent and Landlords act as tax collectors for the government

• The $154,000 vs. $200,000 purchase price advantage that landlord/investors enjoy over individual personal homebuyers can be expressed two ways:
  • Landlord/investors enjoy a 23% discount compared to the individual personal home buyer.

  • Individual personal home buyers must pay 29.87% more than landlord/investors.

This a significant inequity between individuals trying to buy their own new homes and landord/investors looking to buy the same single family dwelling as a rental investment. This disparity has long term implications affecting the distribution of private property. The American tradition favoring individual property rights is reversed. The NRST would discourage individual "consumption" of real property.

"... legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children,...

But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state."

-- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Oct. 28, 1785 -- PROPERTY AND NATURAL RIGHT