Good afternoon Jay! Jay P Hailey wrote and forwarded the following, in part...
> Anyone want to comment? Sure. This issue might produce a more fair tax overall, but it does not address the key area in which taxation becomes necessary. A couple of assumptions below also distort some of the facts. The most important area to address in the issue over taxation, is decreasing spending by the politicians. If spending is decreased, any and all taxes would be affected in a way where taxation itself ought to be reduced. Now, here are some issue to take to task: > "We spend about $400 billion a year complying with the tax code. We spend > $200 billion a year just filling out IRS paperwork," said Rep. John Linder, > R-Ga., who has proposed a bill that would create a national sales tax. These figures are not representative of the median taxpayer. Most of this cost comes from corporate intities that spend inordinate amounts of money to avoid paying a lot of taxes that they otherwise would. I personally for example, spend about $20.00 a year in computer software updates to prepare my tax return for both state and federal taxes. The time involved, if paperwork is handy, is only a few short hours of my time. Ford or General Motors have their own tax experts, tax attorneys, and personnel who attend to tax matters on a daily basis throughout the year. > Proponents have spent millions on research and have concluded that a > national sales tax can replace the income tax, payroll tax, estate tax and > corporate tax. Advocates say the new tax would lower the cost of > manufacturing and job creation and attract foreign investments, among other > things. That assumes all things are equal, which they are not. It also assumes that all of the above tax schemes would be abolished and replaced by one national sales tax. That concept isn't set in concrete either. What about payments to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, worker compensation and retirement schemes? Would, or could a national sales tax cover all of that at a 25% tax rate? In other words, we have committed ourselves to each and every one of these socialist boondoggles above; now, the problem is, since we appear to have reached beyond the point of no return in funding it all, the issue seems to be how are we going to pay for them regardless of which tax scheme we put into place? Would enough people agree to default on any or all of them? Obviously not with an aging population emerging. > "If we were to get rid of the sales or the income tax and the payroll tax > and all compliance costs, we would be so ferociously competitive in a world > economy that corporate America would not be competed with unless foreign > corporations started building their plants in America," Linder said. This assumption is the heighth of stupidity and absurdity! This does NOT address the real issue of taxation, and why taxation is necessary -- in other words, it doesn't deal with the spending restraints necessary to really lower taxation and the cost of government. All of the boondoggles listed above, plus many more, are continuing to increase in cost at a time when no one seriously wishes to remove or decrease government spending in these areas. > Sales tax backers say their tax is relatively easy to collect - forty-five > states already do it - and the tax would collect revenue from the vast, > underground economy. The underground economy operates in either a quazi-legal or illegal manner to begin with. As such, spending and collecting in such a market is documented as secretly and confidentially as possible. How is the government national sales tax going to collect from this underground economy when the IRS is having a difficult enough time as it is trying to do so spending billions of dollars in the process? The second assumption too is misleading. Should the national economy really collapse and shut down, ONLY the underground economy would be in place to meet the needs for good and services in the absence of the regulated economy. I don't believe the underground economy is such a bad idea, as you might suspect -- it does serve a purpose or it wouldn't exist at all. > "About a trillion dollars now is in the underground economy, untaxed. That's > just three items - pornography, illicit drugs and illegal labor. We wouldn't > make them more legal if we had a sales tax, but what we would do is tax them > when they spent it for personal consumption," Linder said. Now that's a stretch! Would you suppose maybe that those in the underground economy haven't already thought through all of this? Of course they have! Personal consumption spending can also take place in an underground economy. I used to buy my whole raw milk directly from a local farmer without paying the already in place state sales tax! Even a 25% national sales tax will drive a lot of consumers toward the underground economy for a lot of things, not necessarily drugs, prostitutes and illegal workers! And, if this tax were significantly higher than 25%, say 30%, 40% or 45% (sounds more realistic), just about everyone would be looking around for alternatives to skirt such oppressive taxation. At any rate, I do believe that a national sales tax, if other taxes were abolished and eliminated, would be a more fair tax without the billions now going into the IRS for administration of the current tax code. But, as I suggested above, people WILL try and skirt this tax, which will necessitate a large arm of police and enforcement personnel to ensure compliance, which too might be impossible. The only way to lower taxes is a full commitment to drastically decrease government spending. It must be the people who demand such, and I don't see anything like that around the corner, not with surging costs coming up in Social Security, health care, and other socialist schemes that we as the people have implictly signed onto over the previous decades. Anyway Jay, nice new thread... hope others pile onto this one with their two cents worth. Kindest regards, Frank _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
