FIRE Easier If VAT Replaced Income Tax?

[Zathras]

When I ran a retail business every single customer got a receipt.
Also, every time I get a hair cut or pizza I receive a receipt.
I am sure that some businesses do this under the table. I know of the owners of one business that did this. A bunch of black vans from the FBI pulled up to their house, loaded up the family, computers, files, lots of other stuff too

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Must have something to do with what part of the world you live in. I cant recall the last time I got a receipt from anyone that was a small mom and pop shop or individual product/service provider. Every single small business owner I know has a little cash stash from here and there. I know a ton of contractors who will offer me a cash price and a higher price if I want to pay by check and get a receipt. Everyone skims a little, maybe for a little home grown "ira", gambling money to take up to tahoe that the wife doesnt know about...

Doesnt really matter though. Getting a receipt doesnt mean the transaction ended up on the books.

And all of this is guesses and suppositions. Ever system can be gamed and I'm sure is gamed. And somehow I feel that if you actually had a way to measure the various ways of doing taxation, included the costs of overhead and administration, paperwork and enforcement...that the amounts paid in per service level and the amount of cheating is pretty much the same no matter what.

 

[samclem]

I know a ton of contractors who will offer me a cash price and a higher price if I want to pay by check and get a receipt.

Yep, an example of cheating under the present income tax system. That's the system with the effective third party reporting. Oh.

The present tax laws are so vague that lots of people take exemptions in the grey area. In my book, it's not cheating the interpret vague rules in the most favorable way if even the IRS can't reliably tell a taxpayer how to properly decide which things are allowable deductions (and they can't: the IRS leadership admits the laws and rules are so vague, subjective, and overlapping that a definitive "tax owed" cannot be calculated for most taxpayers). As much fraud as we have under the present system, I'd bet that far more money escapes capture due to claiming "grey area" exemptions than from deliberate underreporting of income. That's a key difference between the present system and the NRST, as evading the NRST requires a deliberate decision to break the law. At least that can be prosecuted, which is a significant improvement over a bunch of guessing, hoping, winking, and "creative accounting."

"Make April 15th Just Another Day."

 

[starter82]

Everyone skims a little, maybe for a little home grown "ira", gambling money to take up to tahoe that the wife doesnt know about...

That's ridiculous. Sounds like rationalization (of criminal behavior) to me.

 

[RetireeRobert]

As to US Income Tax system, I remember some years ago Money Magazine used to run a project every year (maybe every other year), then report the results. They would contact 50 of "the best" tax professionals in the country. The magazine would set forth some "hypothetical facts" about some taxpayer. Income, marital status, kids, self-employment, various expenses, retirement saving----the whole gamut of "circumstances".

Then 50 pros would prepare the "tax return" to fit those "facts".

Every time the magazine ran the article time after time, there were 50 DIFFERENT answers.

That says it all about our current income tax system. No wonder the IRS figured there was $345 billion left on the table annually.