Bu-bye to the IRS?
President Bush said Tuesday that abolishing the U.S. income tax system and replacing it with a national sales tax was an idea worth considering.
Say hello to a second term!
Opponents say such a system would not be in the best interests of the poor and the middle class who would pay the same tax rate as the wealthy even though they have less disposable income.
Bull! If you have more, you spend more! You don’t tax necessities like food, milk, diapers, and electricity/gas. But you tax furniture, pool chemicals, caviar, new cars, and services. The poor could end up paying zero tax (but they won’t because they’ll keep on smoking and drinking beer) but those with money spend money.
Plus you tax the income of the black marketeers — drug dealers and mob bosses buy clothes and cars but don’t report an income!
Plus a hated bureaucratic institution is eliminated, saving millions in expenses. Sales are already taxed so much of that infrastructure is already in place. According to Empower America
- In 1995 small corporations spent a minimum of $382 in tax compliance costs for every $100 they paid in income.
- Pre 9/11, the IRS was twice as big as the CIA and five times the size of the FBI (kind of tells you where our priorities were, eh?).
- The current 7-million-word long tax code is so complex that even the “experts” can’t figure it out. Each year Money magazine sends out identical tax returns to 50 top tax preparers — and gets back 50 different answers.
- One year, the IRS could not account for how it had spent 64% of its budget.
Hmmm, taxing =services=. A =lot= of lowish paid jobs are services. A lot of high paid jobs too, granted(consultants, accountants, lawyers…), but only the latter are able, as a result of their providing high value services, to buy lots of =stuff=.
Personally to me human services to other humans, paid or not, are some of the nobler things about humanity. Making stuff is great too, dont get wrong, but making stuff…reordering matter using energy..creates losts of entropy..chaos and waste. I am not a tree hugger, but I think that limiting the tax burden to non-essential =stuff=, physical products, would be hugely attractive to environmentalists, and persuasive to lots of others. Would definitey get rid of SUV guilt and enviro guilt generally speaking, while valuing human services to humans. The humanist flavored folks would find that compelling.
Cheers,
Bryan Travis
Resident of the OECDs highest scoring country on the Forbes tax misery index…
Once again, why wait until November; why not now?
I continue to be unmoved by all Bush’s promises of the magical small government utopia awaiting us in November if we just vote for him again. He lied when he made similar promises in 2000, and I think he’s lying now.
Why a federal sales tax is a stupid idea.
There are benefits to and problems caused by a Federal sales tax. It would take lots of debate, and I’d want to see a constitutional amendment tying a sales tax to a limit on both income tax and sales tax, otherwise we’re just opening the door for more taxation.