Okay, now whether you agree with low taxes or high taxes, I think we all agree the current tax code needs to be reworked (out of around 2 trillion dollars, around 300-500 billion dollars is wasted each year because of the tax system we use, and because of the system we use an additional 300 billion is missed out on). So how would you guys change the tax system would you offer a more single player tax system and if so what kind of system would you use but if you didn't what taxes would you keep and get rid of? Would you keep income and get away with capital gains or vice versea or get rid of property tax (a personal favorite of mine to get rid of personally)

Personally I think this country should really look into the idea of a fair tax system, I thought the idea was horrible when I first heard of it but the things being proposed actually make alot of sense, I would make some changed to the one being proposed now but it's to be considered. Like for example, the current one provides a voucher for all spending spent to the essential level, I agree and disagree with this, there should be vouchers but only for people around the poverty level.

Yeah getting long I know but also...

Since this is a fiscal thread, how about our budget? We gain a deficit of around 500 billion dollars a year, and that all adds to a debt that is making us pay around 300-400 billion dollars a year.So how would you balance our budget? What areas would you increase spending more and decrease some? Propose some ideas (Though keep it within reason, for example for 2007 we spent around 439.2 billion dollars for military now even if you don't agree with things like the military I think we can all agree that realistically our budget for that is not going to fall below 300 billion)

What exactly is "fair tax system" weasel words for?

This can answer more questions then I can and it should be read. http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq.



Basically the idea is to repeal all current federal taxes and replace it with a 23-33% National Sales tax. (Note this doesn't mean something that cost a dollar would be 1.22-1.33, rather it would far cheaper then that because of taxes already in every item so it would be more like 1.01-1.05). The idea is that because everyone buys stuff, no one really can cheat (Black Market people for example may make their money illegally but in the end they still pay for it, same with illegal immigrants and everyoen else), people below a certain income level would get a rebate each month based on house size to compensate for basic living expenses. There's a few established benefits for all this.

-With the elimination of most of these taxes alot more businesses will come here (a huge amount of overseas business were polled on what would they do if the US, did this plan 80% said they would set up sites over here, 20% said they would make our country their new headquarters)

-Most of our paychecks would go up a huge amount since hidden taxes take about 40-50% of the average paycheck.

-It makes Congress more accountable to how they spend money, since we'd all be paying the same rate, any increase of revenue drawing would affect all and all would notice.

-The rich really wouldn't get that much of a benefit from because at the moment, the wealthiest Americans don't really pay income taxes to begin with, and use special tax shelters to merely pay a capital gains tax of 17% on the money they earn, in fact the biggest burden through this plan would be lifted off the lower-middle class.

-The Government could spend hundreds of billions of dollars less per year.


Again though, the idea isn't their specific plan, it's the general idea of a consumption base tax system.

So long as certain low-income foods aren't taxed, or are taxed less, it sounds fine. Since the poor spend a greater % of their income on food anyways, that's a basic progressive deal. I'm all for keeping the rich from getting out of taxes.

Except 30% is a steep tariff, even if it also applies to internal sales. I'm going to have to read the whole article before I throw in more than that.

It's not that it's taxed less, it's that families who are spending their money on said food get their money back, all items get taxed the same amount no matter what, that's one of the most important parts of the plan.

OK, after reading the actual FAQ... eliminating the taxes within the product creation and only taxing at the consumer level makes sense. Only tax it once, and so requires less paperwork, and so people spend time and money doing more important and productive things...

Ahh, alot of it counts on that last bit to make things work out.

And it says used goods aren't taxed, but if you're paying 15% more on new ones, people can charge 15% more on used, so that still won't increase my spending power.

But it seems to work well on paper, and can't be much worse than what we've got now.

Your spending power increases because, your paycheck raises higher then the price of goods do.

*blinks* Intriguing. It innately balances out taxation percentage between rich and poor since wealthy people spend more money, and also gets rid of the issue of illegal immigrants being below the radar of the IRS, which are my two major gripes with the current tax system. Hell, I'd not even care much at all about immigration issues if this were enacted, since simply being here lends to contribution to the government. Assuming expenditure amounts really are as stable as they say, I'm all for this.

How.

How does it get the same revenue while simultaneously taxing less?

It isn't taxing less. It's organized such that the same amount of revenue results, just with a different execution. It's taking a larger percentage of one larger sum of money (consumption expenditure) rather than taking smaller percentages from various sources. It gets more complex with the "prebate", but that is it in simplest terms. Far more specific analysis is done here.

Then how do we have more money because of it?

Technically the government gets the same amount of money in the long run. Though initial paycheck size is larger since, rather than deducting taxes before you get your money, it is deducted as it is spent. Now, the higher paycheck may encourage people to buy more, but doing so would actually make them give more money to the government than they would otherwise.

I, for one, do not see it as having less money taken away, leaving more for me to spend on other things. I just see it as simultaneously more difficult for people to evade and simpler to execute. More difficult to evade in the sense that if you buy products by any conventional means you are paying it. That, combined with the fact that it is self-balancing since poorer people spend less and wealthier people spend more, makes it simpler. It can be pulled off with far less bureaucracy - the IRS could be vastly reduced if not replaced outright. And less required bureaucracy leads to less room for error or corruption.

What prevents people from buying stuff from outside the country? Or is that made illegal under this scheme? It becomes even more attractive for rich people to do it, because the costs of getting the stuff into the country don't scale the same as the tax does.

Also, any tax that caps out at 23% is not progressive enough in my eyes.

After digging through the bill itself for a bit, I found this:

Apparently this tax only replaces domestic taxes, and import taxes stay as-is rather than becoming untaxed. Thus, imports cease to be any different.

Also, the price difference will probably not be as sharp as the full 23% being tacked on in addition, since the sellers no longer have to deal with corporate- or small-business-level taxes. As such, they can afford to drop prices by some amount after the 23% is added (not necessarily bringing a net decrease in price, but negating much of the increase). And since the overall size of people's paychecks would be larger without paying income tax, any increase that results from this tax would still be affordable.

As for the fixed 23%, it is only that since at that point it mimics the current amount of tax revenue. It would be up for change as much as any other tax rate would.

Look, if the government is getting the same amount of money from this tax, and the populace is getting taxed less, then this tax plan must create money, possibly pulling it from the æther, or else someone's lying or mistaken.

The free money comes from fewer loopholes to exploit and less IRS people to pay. 'Cause, you see, it's simple.

Edit: One oft repeated point in the FAQ is that by taxing a corporation, you are effectively having sales tax, as they pass the increased costs down to the consumer. By moving all goods tax to the consumer level, they are making this more transparent to the consumer, rather then taxing them more.

But, yeah, I'd ask an economy professor to point out problems before I'd believe the web site that's gushin with naught but praise for the idea.

I had to stop reading when it said the proposed system is good because it's what they used in the middle ages.

The Wiki article on the FairTax system offers a more balanced view of the issue, as well as plenty of links to articles and such on the matter, as would be expected.

However, it is very long and boring, so I haven't bothered to read through it.

So, is there any reason why you cannot tally up all of the sources of income for a person and then tax that? Not will not, or should not, but cannot?

To address your two overall questions, the way this gets the same amount of money while taxing each individual less is the fact that you are taxing individuals less but you are doing it from a far bigger pool, in the current system not everyone files taxes and a huge amount of people find ways to evade them (365 billion dollars is unaccounted for each year), this current system as long as you buy things, you're paying taxes which pretty much adds to everyone above the age of 15 including illegal immigrants, members of the black market and tourist.

Two) Another reason it generates the same revenue is because we also spend less money doing it, with it we're able to collect 300 billion less, and still get the same amount of things done.


You could do that but there are several flaws, some of them being illegal immigrants and members of the black market are discouraged, also it makes evasion easier. Plus the mere tallying up of so many individuals still makes a complex system, and doesn't really lower the tax burden enough to get the full benefit like increase businesses (which really is a major benefit when you look like countries like Ireland that lowered their taxes to around 17% compared to the rest of the EU having around 50% and now Ireland has the fasest growing economy in all of Europe and the second richest person per capita in the world)

Plus another thing is, is that taxing consumption is more reliable then taxing income.

I mean if you really wanted to increase revenue you could have this plus somewhere around 10% income tax for around the richest 1-10% of the country, but anything more then that would defeat some of the purposes of the whole idea, basically using the kind of tax system Europe does but have a far less extreme rate.

I'm currently one of those people not paying taxes right now :P

The site admits they're going to have to set up their own bureaucracy to regulate what's considered a "business purchase". Have they actually estimated the costs to determine if it's actually a cheaper bureaucracy, or are they just stating it as unjustified fact?

Huh? I'm asking if it's physically possible. If it is, doing that would allow us to keep rich people from evading taxes, letting them pick up the tax burden, better than this system. It would also not have any of the characteristics a sales-tax-only system has for letting rich people exploit it since their money tends not to actually go into buying things.

hay i hear monaco has no taxes and there all like billionaires there lets do that

Why?

Yeah you're right who would ever want to follow Ireland they only have a 3.5% unemployment rate, universal health care, free school up to the college level, low crime, the second highest capita per person and the fastest growing economy of Europe and was declared the greatest place in the world to live in 2005 by the Economists.

Seriously the Monaco comment was just dumb, you threw out an example of it working perfectly for no reason other then just cause. The fact is, Europe has a consumption tax and an income tax and it works wonders for them, Ireland has a consumption tax but an income tax at a far lower level and their economy is rising up far faster then the others.

From the site:

Is consumption a reliable source of revenue?

Yes, in fact, consumption is a more stable source of revenue than income, as shown in Figure 3. The chart compares the yearly changes in the tax bases for the income tax (adjusted gross income -- AGI) and the FairTax (personal consumption expenditures -- PCE) for years 1974 to 2004. PCE has always grown from year to year, whereas AGI dropped from 2000 to 2001 and from 2001 to 2002 -- two years in a row. The higher growth rates of AGI in boom years result in overspending and then when the economy slows down either budget cuts are needed or, what is more often the case, taxes are raised or the budget deficit increases.

Figure 3: Stability of the tax base
1974 to 2004




Seriously just read the site they answer most of your questions.

It's possible to make a single income tax like that, but it's not a smart idea since it doesn't really fix most of the problems the current system has on the poor and middle class and figuring out the whole thing would be a nightmare, plus in the end all it would do is drive up prices even more for items for businesses to help fight those taxes thus in the end becoming a burden on the lower class.

" It would also not have any of the characteristics a sales-tax-only system has for letting rich people exploit it since their money tends not to actually go into buying things."

Any proof of this claim? Plus I've already said, you can tack on a small income tax to those richest to get some extra bucks out of them. Since it seems your biggest concern is whether rich people are losing enough of their money (Understandable since rich people should pay the same portion of their paychecks as everyone else, but it seems you want them to pay FAR more) rather then if the system works and actually lowers the burden on the lower class and middle class.

No, apparently you missed my point entirely. GDP/capita isn't the be-all and end-all. You have to actually LOOK at the economies.

Ireland has much less rosy outlook if you take into account that much of their wealth is just in companies stationed there as a tax haven. But hey, I guess if you have lots of corporation HQs, you win, even if it doesn't benefit anyone actually in the country. And Ireland's income equality is below EU average.

Also, a very large portion of their real economy is construction, which is unsustainable.

The main point, though, is for you to show me a big country where being a tax haven works. Ireland has less people than South Carolina, so of course their economy works identically to ours, right?

Thanks.

Uh, yeah, no. It's like fifty pages and includes such bullshit as medieval economics wanking.

Uh, yes, it does EXACTLY that. It makes it so there are not any ways to evade taxes just by being rich.

Any worse than figuring out what counts as a business purchase? Than regulating import/export like you'd have to under only-sales-tax?

Um, why? There'd be NO sales tax.

Yes. Look at what rich people put their money into. Is it food and rent? Or is it investments?

No they should not. The super-rich can afford to take a 90% hit to their income and still be super-rich. Poor people often can't afford to take any hit to their income. Why shouldn't they bear more of the burden?

Of course, you're going to retort that if rich people actually have to pay moneys, they won't set up their corporations here. I'll ask again for you to show me a large country that functioned as a tax haven for corporations.

Because hey, if the rich end up paying a larger percent of the tax burden, it certainly doesn't mean everyone else pays less. Oh wait, it does.

You realize, that corporations placing their headquarters in your country DOES help people, because it increases jobs and all that, a higher economy almost always correlates with higher standards of living, plus all that free education and medicine they get is paid by those businesses being there.

I would point out a big country that is a tax haven and works, but the thing I can't show one that works, because there are pretty much no giant tax haven countries to begin with, any examples I could show would be over a hundred years old and thus couldn't correlate to today's society.

Fifty pages? It has a single page of questions that instantly get you to another question you want, I found the answer to your question in a minute using the system.


Yes it would be worse then a business purchase, since in the sales tax area we're arguing that pretty much everything gets one so pretty much there is little accounting for it. On the other hand for the income tax you'd have to include capital gains tax, income tax, property tax, the current sales tax system to find the right rate for multiple groups of people, rather then one rate for everyone like the sales tax system.

Why would it drive up prices? Just because there's no sales tax doesn't mean prices wouldn't be driven up, since some places don't have sales tax at all.

Rich people buy food, they also buy houses, tv's and far more luxury items, I agree they don't buy as much of their paycheck as other families which is why I want to add an income tax to them, but it's not as bad as you say that it means we should just have huge income taxes. There are charts that prove the rich buy more then the poor at huge rates and even then. Investments can be put into two categories (Smart Investments, and Tax saving investments), the former help the economy and help grow businesses, the latter merely saves money for the rich and does nothing to help the country, with more money opened up and less tax loopholes, the former is more likely to exist then the latter.

Q
(Understandable since rich people should pay the same portion of their paychecks as everyone else, )


"No they should not. The super-rich can afford to take a 90% hit to their income and still be super-rich. Poor people often can't afford to take any hit to their income. Why shouldn't they bear more of the burden?"

edit: See now that's not a flaw with the proposed system in a "Would it work matter" that's merely you disagreeing in an idealogical sense, which if you did you should have just voiced it from the beginning. I would say my personal idealogy is that alot of wealthy people do earn their money and they shouldn't be discouraged from doing so merely because they make more. But I'll argue this from an logical point of view.

Increasing the income to something even around that is ridiculous for a few reasons, it raises revenues but it lowers investments at a far larger rate, I'll look for the articles somewhere I read somewhere that doing something like that would only raise around 200-300 billion dollars of revenues but would stop major investing, plus taxes at that level would discourage almost all businesses from leaving our country which means less jobs for the people.

Again I can't show you a large tax haven country, because they pretty much don't exist, but just because a country is small doesn't mean their ideals can't be looked at. Almost all countries with universal education are small doesn't mean we can't consider it for ourselves.

"Because hey, if the rich end up paying a larger percent of the tax burden, it certainly doesn't mean everyone else pays less. Oh wait, it does. "

I never said that your idea wouldn't lessen the burden some, I merely said the system I'm talking about does as well, in fact it would create a greater decrease in burden. The Middle Class the burden would be lessen around the same area, but the poor get the biggest decrease in burden since they pay the least amount of taxes so the least amount of burden can be lifted on the other hand, in my system their paychecks get a far bigger increase, giving them far more economic power.

The last time I checked, all the Fair Tax ended up doing was shifting the burden of taxation away from the wealthy and more towards the middle class. To it's credit, it also shifted taxation away from the poorest to the middle class, but that's not much of an improvement.

Consider that once you add in an average 7% state sales tax, and fairly common 1% city sales taxes, businesses have a lot of incentive to have businesses conduct transactions under the table. Ever go to a shady liquor store that had a "cash discount?" Same thing, larger scale, and it's difficult to stop this because there are legitimate reasons for a cash discount (credit card fees, less hassle, no fear of fraud) and any law saying you couldn't do so would set up a nice legal battle between the Government and merchants saying they can set up whatever price they damn well please.

Another problem is that if you only tax spent money you've essentially given the richest of the rich a license to compound their money indefinitely without tax. When you take into account that it just gets easier and easier to dodge sales taxes when you have large piles of physical money, you would wind up with a large wealthy elite who never pay taxes of any sort, not even the amounts that they are taxed now though stock investment and dividends.

On the off chance you manage to stop the black market cash only sales and foreign sales somehow; you still have to take into consideration that the wealthy, on average, spend a much smaller percent of their income on average then the middle and poor classes. Thus the shift I started out with: That the tax, while taking the same amount total, gets a larger percent from the middle tax would still hold out. So even in a perfect system it'd end up not working in any kind of logical way, left or right. (I somehow doubt that the aim that many fairtax supporters are trying for is to give a giant tax cut to the rich. I mean, it's obviously the aim of some of them, but probably not Alph here in particular.)

I'm not sure what system of taxation in particular would be best, but I'm sure as hell that it is not the Fair Tax. Perhaps taxing corporations based on what they are worth on the open market, combined with a smaller national sales tax? Good luck getting that to pass though.

EDIT: readability
EDIT2: more readibility fixed.

EDIT: Before someone points this out, when averaged per-capita the rich and the middle class would be paying (about, the rich will probably have slightly more, let's say around 5%, though I don't have a source for that.) the same tax, true, but I'm comparing it to our current system where roughly 50% of our tax income comes from the richest 5% of Americans.

Ummm, did you actually read the link I provided? Because according to the numbers I've been reading almost none of the things you said about the middle class is true, true it gets less of it's money from the rich, but it also takes away the burden from the paying middle class now, studies and statistics show the buying power of the middle class is far higher under the FairTax system then the current system.

Cite these numbers and statistics, and not just the statistics themselves but I want the methodology of the study, the name of the organization and or person who did it and their credentials.

Because the Presidential Advisory Panel disagrees with you.

Cite: http://www.taxreformpanel.gov/final-report/TaxReform_Ch9.pdf

EDIT: I just noticed that you're captaining for a 23% tax, which strikes me as odd. Is this before or after the libertopia "cut all the useless programs" thing that a lot of fairtax proponents go for, or are they seriously saying that'll cut it for current spending? Or are you doing that annoying bullshit fuzzy math where you're going for a 23% tax-inclusive rate but in real-terms that's a 31% tax, which would make it roughly a 40% tax once you factor in state and city taxes, assuming full compliance in which case they won't have to hike it up.

EDIT2: I looked it up myself, it's using the 23% bullshit lying math, so you're really talking about a 31% sales tax in the way you and I think about sales tax. When I think of sales tax, (assuming it's a 100 dollar item) I go, "Well, it's 100 bucks, and tax is 23%, so it's 123 dollars", but using your lying sack of shit math it's "Well, it's 100 bucks, so it's 131 dollars but because 31/131 equals 23.6%, despite the fact that NOBODY DOES SALES TAX THAT WAY I'm only paying 23% tax :hurr:"

EDIT3: It's not quite as cool as a presidential report, but FactCheck hates the FairTax too. This is even funnier as if FactCheck has a bias it's decidedly right wing.

http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html

I've already given websites that do, there's a damn calculator that does it for you at some points.

Okay, one the Presidential Advisory Thing is honestly bullshit, the entire nature of the study was bullshit. For one thing the study barely actually looked at the FairTax, two the study said they could only look at tax systems that one, offer a progressive income tax system and various tax incentives (IE, changing nothing), basically they barely looked at the FairTax and gave it no real consideration.

Plus, I said around 23-33% which is around what they said, which still means the item would cost less then $1.23. Plus the fact is there are some things not taken into account like the fact that with a FairTax, the Government could run on 200-300 billion less per year. Plus, they also expect a 15 non-compliance rate like income taxes, problem income taxes being the way they are gathered are far easier to cheat on the other hand, a sales tax is far harder to dodge.

Plus even they admitted the fairtax would increase purchasing power even in the gloomiest circumstance which is the most important thing.

That's not what I meant and you know it. Show me at one (credible. Not some bob jones shit) university done or government done study on the effects of the fair tax on class tax burden that backs up what you said before. Besides, I don't trust that calculator's math, with just a little bit of gaming it I managed to get it to say that the fair tax would give me literally more money then I had put in as my pre-tax income, which while not totally impossible, would rely on several factors there's no way in hell could be predicted well enough to throw in the calculator.

This last part is just factually incorrect, they obviously researched it in at least some amount of detail to arrive at the different percentages of possible tax, why the fairtax stated tax was impossible, coming up with a likely real tax rate, etc.

If it had been that simple they would have just said it failed the progressive requirements. They looked into it into enough detail to show why it was a bad idea even without those restrictions.

Run this by me again, my head exploded when you said a 33% sales tax would make a 1 dollar item cost less then exactly 1.33 us dollars not counting state and city tax.

See, this doesn't strike me so much as a fact then as a cool possibility. It's not like they could fire all the accountants and tax enforcers when they move to the fair tax, they still need to count and ensure the money arrived to the government and enforce the fairtax tax law. I'd say at best they could cut it in 1/2 and only spend 100-150 billion dollars. Besides, this point is rendered moot when you take into account that the tax-payout prebates would cost something along the lines of 800 billion yearly, and that the government would end up losing a small amount of money due to inefficiency when they had to pay the sales tax on things they use.

I already, above, went over why it is easier to cheat the system in a fair-tax setup. If anything a 15% guess was too low. Before you needed to have some law knowledge and a connection to a private island in the Bahamas to skirt tax, now you'd just need a wallet with paper money and a merchant who likes getting said paper money. Even the ghetto could dodge that tax.

It'd increase the purchasing power of the rich and poor, but in general I don't believe that it'd have much of a noticeable effect.

EDIT: I just realized the extra k I got in the calculator was from the prebate, so now I'm still just uncertain of it's math, but not completely horrified by it.

Boston University good enough? http://people.bu.edu/kotlikoff/FairTax%20N...024,%202007.pdf
There are plently more one Wikipedia.

Okay, get this the reason why something that cost 1 dollar now wouldn't be 1.23 is because without most of these taxes, the prices of items would drop, so once you figure in the 23-33% sales tax it, imagine it this way. Everything cost a dollar now right? Well without these taxes lets say the prices drop to 80 cents, now add in the 30 percent sales tax what do you got? $1.04 item, still 30% sales tax but it doesn't cost $1.30.

Also another flaw of the Presidential Advisory Board was that it only had the FairTax replacing corporate and income taxes, not all the other important taxes. The study was just flawed. Especially when you don't include the payroll tax, which the elimination of would far more greatly take burden off the middle class.

If we used a basic consumption tax, we could easily using more then 200 billion less.

Plus, what stops non-compliance alot of times is the low amount of profit for the huge amount of punishment, it's far easier to keep track of sales and all that then income, also the majority of sales in this country comes from big name businesses that would never take the risk.

"800 billion yearly is the cost of prebate"

Want to actually back that up? Since at most it'd be half that. Plus, you realize we don't have to do specifically the FairTax's plan? Personally I think we should go with the majority of their plan, get rid of some of the prebates and include a non-increasing 10% income tax for the highest wage earners.

No it wouldn't, at least not to that effect. At least not if Fair Tax is capable of keeping up with income tax, because the Income Tax make up about 70% of our revenue. At best you're looking at the item costing 1.28 or so instead of 1.34.

Cite: http://bp0.blogger.com/_5aAsxFJOeMw/SB8F9j...s-by-Source.JPG

EDIT: Also, in the case of non-raw goods, the companies that make them also have to buy products to make the final end product, which at a 34% tax could be incredibly painful and acctually raise the price. When you add in that it's also a 34% tax on gasoline, effectively doubling shipping rates I could make the argument that the base price on products would increase in general and thus cost more then the tax added.

EDIT2: Ok, it wouldn't double, it'd be 1.5 times the current rate. I say 1.5 and not 1.3 because they don't plan on repealing current gas tax for the fair tax last I checked.

Possibly because the fair tax could barely keep up with those. Besides, the vast majority of the payroll tax is Income Tax, which, again, it can barely keep up with at your proposed rate with 100% compliance.

I still think this is insanely optimistic. So much so that it doesn't hold up in a serious argument.

It's almost like about a quarter of people, which admittedly is a minority, shop at small businesses. And it's almost like these small businesses, which have been undercut forever by big business, would jump at the chance to undercut Wal*Mart with a "cash discount" plan. Hell, it's almost even like it's not even completely unheard of at 6.75% sales tax, or that people could possibly move from buying big business to small business because the main reason they shop at Wal*Mart anyway is cost; if Joe's General could undercut them by even 10% they don't have any brand loyalty to stay with Wal*Mart.

No it isn't. Even with an IRS it's much easier for an individual business to lie about the total number of sales they had (and lock the unregistered money away under the matress or in a saftey deposit box. Or, say it was "tips".) then it is for the vast majority of people to dodge income tax. I covered the last bit above.

Fine. It'd only be 500 billion. (Fairtax.org says 486, so this is a reasonable rounding.) Even so my math, even using your insanely high estimate of 300 billion cut from the IRS, shows that 300<500. Hell, using really high level math I can say it's 200 billion more.


On a different note, I just noticed that the fair-tax adds 500 billion dollars of government receipts as revenue for the government, which, while hilarious, is completely insane. So even assuming a 100% compliance rate the math there is so fuzzy that it's laughable. So we can expect that magical sales tax % to go higher then "23%" right then and there for that reason alone.

Also, I'd read that Boston university study you linked, They even said that a 100% compliance fair tax would have to be at least "26%", which is really more along the lines of 34% or so. Looking through this I don't think they corrected for the government spending mess in the paragraph above, though if you point out the page where they did it's possible I just missed it. I'm still reading through the thing, but it seems suspect.

Also, for more fun, William Gale, who is part of the Brooklings Institute, thinks that the fairtax rate might have to be has high as "34%" (roughly 50%) to be revenue neutral, and has some pretty good math on his side.

http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/gale/20050516.pdf

EDIT: What the fuck happened to my quotes.

EDIT: I realize you're not arguing for a straight fair tax anymore, but unless you pick a plan which has had some sort of study supporting it, or could at least do the math yourself and we could pretend it was a study we'd be doing the tax equivalent of masturbation.

That's why I didn't bother pushing for my total value corporate tax more then just as a neat option. I'm not going to argue with you over an intellectual fantasy.

Wrong, a vast majority of payroll taxes come from the 17% capital gains tax for ther first $90,000 made, it's not counted as an income tax which is why people with tax sheltering skills usually pay it but not income taxes. Additionally the fact that the Presidential Advisor Board doesn't release the details of their studies make any judgement they give non-reliable by your own standards.

The Gas Tax might disappear, since fairtax eliminates all other taxes.

The 200 billion dollars saved, is agreed by alot of organizations, instead of just denoucing why not show a source that says it's absolutely wrong (I've provided material that would show it's right), plus the number of files being done is dropped by 80%, meaning 80% files are now being done and are far simpler, lets say only 60% is saved through this, that's 180 billion.
Edit: Here's a study supporting it right here http://www.beaconhill.org/FairTax2007/TaxA...ts071025%20.pdf


Again, a huge amount of complaints you give about are specific number 23%, it can be higher then that you realize, like I said specifically 33%, which goes along with the BU essay and still in the end says that purchasing power increases, which quite frankly is all that matters. Plus along with all this, one thing that all people studying the Fair Tax, agree but none include in their calculations (Understandable beacuse it's not assured) is the increases economic activity in our country.

Even then about compliance, researchers have shown that consumption taxes usually have a higher compliance rate then more complicated codes, according to the Government Accountabiltiy Office.

Also William Gale was looking at a program different from the FairTax.

Okay, I get it you don't agree with the FairTax, but I've offered studies and sources to other studies, so quit acting like nothing has been backed up. Here's another study that backs it up http://people.bu.edu/kotlikoff/w11831.pdf
http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/GaleRebuttal.pdf
http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/JCTRebuttal.pdf
http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/MacroeconomicAn...isofFairTax.pdf

It would be more productive to quote these studies, then link to them, so they back up a specific point rather than just linking to them and then claiming that they back up FairTax.

You need to back up your argument with specifics, and you need to cite where these specifics come from.

Honestly I think I've hit the point where without a degree in economics or at least getting my old university access back I can't throw any more rebuttals at you. I'm not reading through all 150+ pages of those documents to rebut them when I'm not even an expert. I've made my case for why I think it's a bad idea, and have shown that other people with expert knowledge on the subject agree with me. You have done the same for your point of view. Fine. Obviously neither of us are budging on this, and without actually doing it there's no real way to see who's right on this considering the variables involved.

Anyone want to throw an alternate tax plan/idea with some amount of study, or hell, just masturbate furiously with ideas we have no sources for? I enjoy the idea of a tax code thread because I am apparently an insanely boring person, but we've spent three fucking pages talking about nothing but the Fair Tax in a thread that isn't solely about the Fair Tax.

EDIT: Huh, seemed longer. 2 pages it is.

I think we should destroy the government and stop paying taxes. Let the rednecks with guns rule, like we did with the revolutionary war.

Well there is flat taxes and VAX but both of those are just altered fair tax. Plus, are there any specific type of taxes that you disagree with? Like for me it's specifically property tax I have a problem with, since they are basically serfdom and represent the idea that land is never yours.

Edit: Plus tell me more of this corporate value tax.

Basically the corporate value tax would be to make a large part of the federal income come from taxing companies based off how much they would be worth on the open market.

Determining how much a company is worth on the open market is so easy I can do it without using any math. It's just the market cap of the company. For example, Birkshire Hathaway is worth 140b, Google is worth 220b, etc. We have a total market cap of something alone the lines of 18 trillion dollars.

Since we seem to want to replace all tax with a single tax, there are worse ways to go. It's impossible to lie about your market cap, and it's stupidly hard to bring down without making retarded stock decisions that'd bankrupt your company. 100% compliance wouldn't just be some libertarian wet dream, but evasion would be actually impossible.

Since we currently have a federal budget of 2.2 trillion dollars, there would be a 12.3 percent tax on total corporate value. This would actually be slightly more revenue then we get now, as I rounded, the real percent would be 12.2 repeating. If you want we can call it 12.23. This is a tax exclusive rate, tax inclusive it would be something like 10%. This is assuming the iraq war lasts forever, we never pay back our national debt, etc. After those two expenses went away, we could probably reduce it to a 10 or 11 percent tax.

EDIT: I forgot to answer your first question. Other then completely batshit stuff like an air tax or bullshit like that, I can't think of any I absolutely cannot stand for the purposes of creating a tax-revenue equal united states with a more unified system.

If you mean personally then I lean closer to anarchism then anything else, so I dislike all of the suggestions. I'm just throwing out taxes I could live with the negative effects of.


EDIT: clarification.

Actually our budget is now 3 trillion.

But the worth of the market, and the actual money brought in are not equal, so how would companies that have alot of net value, but not as much actual yearly income survive?

This is a self correcting problem, if it would be impossible to make that much, it's stock price would go down to a level it could handle.

It's also a hypothetical that won't really happen. The reason the share prices are that high is because the company, does in fact, make enough money to justify those prices. Some do it through products, services, and other simply invest the money they already have to make large amounts of money, such as banks.

The only "negative" effect I could see this having on that front would be to force extremely large conglomerates to break into smaller, more specialized companies.

So, a little late, but I just want to be sure I have this right. I'm not very good at economics, but let's see...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government sponsored programs that back bank loans. If someone defaults on their loan, then these two companies have to pay the bank.

And now, because America is hella irresponsible about credit, these organizations are paying so many defaulted loans that they require a bail-out to stay afloat.

So, what happens when that money dries up? And is this the beginning of the credit bubble burst because, as I said before, America is hella irresponsible with money?