Presidential candidates taxation policies

[Independent]

Good points, but I'll take a bit of exception on a few of them:



It's true that the NST rate would be high - but the amounts are relatively small and spread out over many purchases and across many sellers. So cheating on a single purchase may not add up to much overall.

That's one reason I don't like the Estate Tax and Cap GAins Tax - it can be a big chunk at one time and just screams 'avoidance'.
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.

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.

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.

But I still don't think it has a chance - but if Huckabee can get support for it, he may use it as a lever to simplify the current tax situation. At least he's talking about it.

-ERD50

I guess I can make the obvious comments - Yes, I'm assuming an NST is eventually as complex as the current individual FIT. I figure the voters, lobbyists, and politicians don't change. The few years of simpler NST aren't worth the complexity of the transition.

OTOH, I can see an argument for dropping the corporate FIT. That gets rid of all the corporate lawyer and accountant costs that you mention. But we can do that without converting to an NST.

I don't have any good data on the tactics rich people use to avoid income taxes. I can see some ways of avoiding some sales tax, such as buying your yacht while you're living at your vacation home in Bermuda, and registering it there.

The notion of getting some tax money on the back end from current "illegal activities" is appealing. I don't know how much is involved. I don't know how much of that money would be spent buying from individuals who are avoiding the sales tax.

 

[starter82]

Loss leader, better (lower cost) sourcing, mis-pricing, who knows? You can't judge the overall pricing/profit strategy of a retailer or industry by looking at one product out of thousands.

But it's not just one item, it's practically all of them. This was simply the most obvious. It's not really the kind of item that gets people into stores either. I could see a 20% difference, but I found this a bit much. Maybe they're going for broke to try to compete with Wal-Mart.

Imagine that it did happen, and it was announced "Starting in one month, there will be a 23% national sales tax." You thought people bought a lot of stuff now. It would be like one month of supermarket sweep for cars, houses, etc. Prices would jump.

I think it'd be hard to say for sure if that would happen. If you know you're going to have a lot more money next month to pay for what you buy (even though the cost will go up), you might be more likely to hold off. I think you'd see certain people buying more and others holding off, so it might balance itself out. Eh, what do I know, I couldn't believe that a co-worker purchased a car a week or so ago just to avoid the new sales tax rate, up 20% this year.

Nevertheless, it'd be fun to watch!