Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

Adopting a national sales tax as our one means of taxation?


Repeal all income taxes and just be taxed on what you consume. Wouldnt that be the fairest method of taxation for everyone? And it would eliminate a lot of beaurocratic waste to boot.

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

Because it would greatly raise the amount of tax paid by...

illegals
criminals
rich Democrat Senators from Massachusetts whose money comes from their (or in Kerry's case, someone else's) family fortunes.


and the biggest thing is that it would eliminate the government's ability to make you do things by giving you "tax incentives" for certain activities. Think about it, who would be most effected by this. Universities who recieve Billons of dollars to further the left's indoctrination on our youth, hybrid cars, mortgage companies, banks, etc. I'm sure that people would alos revolt against their property, sales, and excise taxes, if they could no longer "write them off".

Remember, they are smarter than you, and they must tell you how to live!

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

It amazes me that so many people go along with that. Not the "government is smarter than me and I will yield" but the "government is smarter than the unwashed masses and they must be mothered". i.e the typical bleeding heart libber.


Come on libbers, tell me why this is a bad idea?

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

The answers will be :

- It would slow the economy as it would create a disincentive to spend.
- It would be unfair to tax the poor for food and clothes.
- It would create a black market for untaxed items.
- It would make stores tax collectors and require some form of oversight.

My answers are to those are :

- Spending is never a problem for Americans and we'd all have more money to begin with as our current deductions would be in our paychecks.
- It would be easy to have "need to live" items tax free, you could also tax luxury items at a higher rate.
- Probably would somewhat but not enough to have a significant effect.
- Same as previous, whatever oversight is needed would be no bigger than the current IRS.

Agree with FTW that it would reduce the power of government to control our lives which is why it won't happen.

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

- It would lead to a barter system and make the black market far stronger
- It would affect sales and jobs simply because people would buy used items whenever possible to avoid the hefty taxes
- You would still need a massive IRS to make sure stores are paying their sales tax and to investigate the black market
- We would have to address sales tax on necessities, especially for the working poor
- The tax would be enormous, especially after adding state and city taxes on top of it
- If mfg's had to pay sales tax on raw materials, it would result in a multiplier affect on the price of products.
- It would encourage saving, which is good, but on the other hand spending is what drives the economy.
- Many European countries already rely heavily on sales taxes for revenues (VAT), and their growth does not compare with ours.
- It would be at least as easy to raise taxes as it is under our current system.
- The fuzzy math used for a national sales tax doesn't really work, as this link shows:

http://www.fairtaxation.org/other/nationalsalestax.php

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

Then reality would set in that the rich do, indeed, pay almost the entire income tax in this country.

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

It's sensible and the Democrats would never stand for it.

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

Not as a percentage of disposable income, but you like the math that takes pity on the wealthy. I like the math that protects the poor.

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

We have national tax here in Germany, as Patters mentioned, the VAT. It's 19% on everything but food. Thankfully we can buy forms at $3 each to avoid paying it, but it's a pain in the ass. With the dollar in the toilet I can't afford to do anything off post anyway. The economy is dying here.

One of my other major interests other than sports is cars. A huge deal on the horizon is going to be the cost of European cars coming into the US. Due to the strong euro and weak dollar BMW, Mercedes and VW et al are going to get hammered on profit margins. A lot of these companies are working on lengthy pre-negotiated contracts that have set exchange rates on them. When these contracts are up the US headquarters of the companies are going to get killed trying to re-negotiate at exchange rates that have doubled.

Re: Tell me again why this wouldnt work?
 

I never really understood this contention... most states have sales taxes but we aren't seeing a widespread black market for groceries, are we..? Even items that are heavily taxed (gasoline, cigaretts, alcohol) don't exactly have thriving black markets.
Heh heh... a liberal arguing that higher taxes hurt sales and jobs... nice to see you've become infected with at least a little common sense :D
Well, this is already happening, now isn't it..?