I ran across this guys blog when I was Googling for some estate planning information. He takes a look at some of the major players taxation policies. Might be of some interest to people.
Kevin A. Pollock BLAWG
Kevin A. Pollock BLAWG
I ran across this guys blog when I was Googling for some estate planning information. He takes a look at some of the major players taxation policies. Might be of some interest to people.
Kevin A. Pollock BLAWG
I used to like the simplicity of a national sales tax, but got a quick education from this forum, and I realize that it would never work, and isn't desirable.
My guess is that Huckabee would be wasting his time on this if he got elected and tried to get it through.
I used to like the simplicity of a national sales tax, but got a quick education from this forum, and I realize that it would never work, and isn't desirable.
My guess is that Huckabee would be wasting his time on this if he got elected and tried to get it through.
Just looking at it on the surface, I think Paul's ideas are the soundest.
Do you have a link to a previous discussion on the topic?
Although there could be some benefit to more closely linking use of government services to funding said services, "fee" is just another word for "tax"...
President Paul: That'll be $12,000 please.
HFWR: Grumble, grumble...
President Paul: But it's a fee, not a tax.
HFWR: Oh, in that case...
I used to like the simplicity of a national sales tax, but got a quick education from this forum, and I realize that it would never work, and isn't desirable.
My guess is that Huckabee would be wasting his time on this if he got elected and tried to get it through.
So, how about a tax on corporate sales? Shouldn't be too hard to figure what the rate would need to be to capture as much revenue as the current corporate income tax does. Let's say it's 5% of sales (note1). A company has $1M in sales, they owe $50,000 in tax. Period. No deductions, no calculation of profits/loss, etc.
The problem with this approach is that profit margins are vastly different in different industries.
What's at the other end of the spectrum? I've always heard that grocery stores have low profit %, but they turn over so much inventory that it adds up. So, a 5% increase in food prices might be bad.
I often wonder how much food is marked up.
If you are talking about the retailers, not very much.
Nov 30, 2007, Supermarket News
"Food retailers overcame sharp increases in energy, health care and other costs to post a median after-tax net profit of 1.91% in fiscal year 2006-2007, up from 1.46% the previous year, according to Food Marketing Institutes Annual Financial Review 2006-2007, released yesterday."
Then why the price difference that I mentioned?
However, there is no reason to go to a single tax rate. If there are 60,000 pages of tax code, then 59,999 pages are used to determine your taxable income, and 1 page has the table of graduated rates that we apply to that income. I would keep the 1 page and get rid of as many of the 59,999 as possible.
“We’ll get better compliance with a sales tax than an income tax.”
Compliance rates go down when tax rates go up. A high sales tax rate, as proposed in the FairTax, will result in significant incentive to avoid the tax. Compliance also depends on complexity. An individual income tax and sales tax with equal rates and equal complexity will have about the same compliance rates.
You're assuming that the NST gets as many exceptions as the current tax code. Maybe, but until then it is simpler. It's pretty bad when you cannot even rely on the IRS themselves to provide an answer to a tax question.“A sales tax doesn’t need the IRS”.
Nonsense, all taxes require enforcement. Equivalent sales and income taxes need about the same enforcement (see paragraph above).
This depends on how much the wealthy are taking advantage of loopholes. In some ways, this might at least have the appearance of 'fairer'? I don't know the numbers.“Wealthy people will finally pay their ‘fair share’ “.
I expect that wealthy people will pay less under a sales tax, simply because they spend a lower percent of their incomes.
Not obviously wrong at all. When you factor in the cost of compliance, the cost of avoidance (we are paying for corporations to hire accountants and lawyers to lower their tax burden, and then we end up paying the tax that they didn't), and the added tax revenue from illegal activities that are not taxed now , but will be when those thugs spend their money - the average guy/gal may end up paying less overall tax.That’s the notion that we’ll all pay less with a sales tax, but it will raise the same amount of revenue for the gov’t. This is obviously wrong when you say it bluntly.