alright children, time for all of you to check out www.fairtax.org if you give a **** about your money
Fair Tax Act
- Thread starter fatcats
- Start date
Is it more than...
What about the economic consequences of decreased consumption? The economy thrives on spending, not saving. I'm less likely to buy a luxury if it's gonna cost me 15%... and I bet too many people will think like that as well.
Granted, the long-term benefit would be that -- assuming decreased consumption -- people actually saved more for retirement. But I'd fear for the short-term impact leading to increased unemployment.
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What about the economic consequences of decreased consumption? The economy thrives on spending, not saving. I'm less likely to buy a luxury if it's gonna cost me 15%... and I bet too many people will think like that as well.
Granted, the long-term benefit would be that -- assuming decreased consumption -- people actually saved more for retirement. But I'd fear for the short-term impact leading to increased unemployment.
Very persuasive arguement. Where do I sign up?
If I recall correctly, Americans spend something like $40 BILLION a year just preparing their taxes.
But a sales tax isn't a fair tax, it's a regressive tax. The lower the income the higher the percentage will go to taxes.
first thing i thought when i read that site.BuddhaRoadkill said:
plus, a higher sales tax favours people turning into cash only deals and informality. then, evasion on big ticket items would be the most cost-effective, thus raising evasion % at that level, furthering the regressive effect.
i´ve seen that before.
This plan gives a flat rebate to everyone. So a person making $20k/yr can expect to pay no taxes whatsoever. The millionaire gets the same dollar amount rebate, so rich people will still pay more taxes. In fact, there's no way for the rich to avoid paying taxes with this plan unless they buy black-market.BuddhaRoadkill said:
the way i remember US laws were, you´d have to change a lot of them to make evasion somewhat less cost-effective.LordOpie said:
i´ve seen that system fail, and hurt the economy a lot more than it helps, even with tight tax collection control and regulation.
even if you instate tax filing every month, a huge increase on tariffs (even on personal traveller items), invasive searches on airports/borders, taxes on money transfers (to see who is transferring money to who) and outlawing money transfers over $500 made outside banks (so you can know when a commercial transaction happened) there will still be a lot of evasion.
even after crapping all over civil rights and privacy protection the current laws afford in the US.
when your 70k iwc carries a sales tax of 35%... you´d go to canada to buy (that on a lot other stuff). thats not "black market" necesarilly.
a lot of border cities (how far from the border depends on how high the tax) economies and consumption will suffer.... a very high sales tax (over 30% which i guess should be the minimum necesary to replace all taxes) make people go shopping for most but the cheapest perishable items once or twice a year in some tax-friendly place, and bulk up for the next 6 months.
not necesary a black market in some dodgy place downtown cash on hand is way around.
So potentially, if you got all your money in cash or in a foreign account and spent money either cash only or on overseas markets, youd never get taxed?
bingo!!!!.BurlyShirley said:
unless you get a pretty high tariff when you brought your stuff over (would be really hard to be picky there and not put tariffs on commercial imports, which the WTO would find interesting) and to avoid you sneaking things, they went gestapo on you.