National Sales Tax: "massive redistribution of burden to the middle class"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32739-2005Apr6.html

Thursday, April 7, 2005; Page A30

George F. Will blithely commented that the national sales tax proposed by Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) would "not only sensitize consumers to the cost of government with every purchase, (but) would destroy K Street" (op-ed, March 31). But a 23 percent sales tax would constitute a massive redistribution of the tax burden to the middle class and the poor -- exactly the people into whose hands more money should flow if an economy is to grow from the ground up. A 23 percent tax on food? Want to exempt food? What constitutes "food"? Or "medicine"? Figuring those things out will cost the government plenty. Want to simplify the tax code and kill K Street? Get rid of tax breaks for corporations and rich people, and fix the tax brackets so that fewer people are taxed out of the economy.

George F. Will overstated the simplicity and ease of enforcing a national sales tax. Only "personal" purchases would be subject to the tax; thus, the incentive would be to classify purchases as "business" to avoid the tax. Likewise, not all services would be taxable. Education, for example, would be classified as an "investment" and thus exempt. No doubt those K Street lobbyists would attempt to add other exemptions. Who'd want to pay a sales tax on medical expenditures or a house? And would churches, charities and the government pay this high sales tax on their purchases?

In addition, Mr. Will repeated the misleading assertion that the tax rate is 23 percent. Under this plan, though, the tax on a $100 purchase would be $30. Proponents are using the "tax-inclusive" method to calculate the tax rate, dividing the tax of $30 by the price-plus-tax of $130 to produce a rate of 23 percent. This is not the way sales tax rates are usually calculated. Anyone on the street would tell you that a 23 percent tax on a $100 purchase would be $23. No nation or state has had success in collecting a sales tax at such a high rate; evasion no doubt would be rife.

[Warpy]

1. It would almost be funny to see these dimwits try this plan

I can guarantee you that overnight the consumer economy would grind to a screeching halt. People would be buying the bare minimum of food to keep themselves alive. They'd cancel the cable, shut the electricity off, cancel the phone, and figure out how to garden. Clothing would be patched, mended, let out, taken in, and anything else that would get it to last as long as possible. Shoes would be worn only outside in public.

Forget plasma TV sets, DVD recorders, new cars, or a new Easter outfit.

I guarantee you that it would be the shortest tax plan in history.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

2. Bush's "base" CANNOT keep the economy afloat...

...by buying German luxury automobiles and yachts.

WORKING people (not the worthless motherf**kers in Bush's "base") will buy SURVIVAL ITEMS ONLY.

The ALREADY DISMAL JOB MARKET would hemorrhage as job after job after JOB would cut due to NO RETAIL SALES.

People who are STRUGGLING TO AFFORD MEDICAL CARE won't go to the doctor at ALL, because the premiums (I pay $460 per month to Blue Cross as I am self-employed) would no longer be the ONLY burden...the DEDUCTIBLE would be taxed, too.

CRIME would become RAMPANT.

Some of those magnificent luxury automobiles would be keyed, the windows would be smashed, and we would be living smack dab in the middle of John Carpenter's "They Live."

[candy]

3. You just desribed growing up poor in the 30's,which I did.

[ProudDad]

6. We should do this anyway

Starve the beast

Don't buy anything you don't NEED! Don't buy new when you can buy used. Walk don't drive. Downsize and simplify your life...

[EVDebs]

4. George Will hasn't read Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig

Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else by David Cay Johnston.


If he did, he'd realize the damage the Republican 'free-market' ideologues are placing on the country's economy. Chapters 7 and 8 are the most devastating, IMHO, as they show that we have a de facto 'flat tax' right now in the USA when you consider the overall tax burden of all taxes, state federal and local.

Mr Will just wants to continue the class warfare in this country, not realizing that, as Warren Buffet has said, the richest 1% has already won !

"Corporate income taxes in fiscal 2003 accounted for 7.4% of all federal tax receipts, down from a post-war peak of 32% in 1952. With one exception (1983), last year’s percentage is the lowest recorded since data was first published in 1934. Even so, tax breaks for corporations (and their investors, particularly large ones) were a major part of the Administration’s 2002 and 2003 initiatives. If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning."

from www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0306-01.htm

[applegrove]

5. Just another attempt to train the middle class to be for no social

programs. They figure if they pass the whole tax burden onto the middle class - then they will learn to hate SS and stuff like that.

What happens... you genius neocons... if transferring the burden totally onto the middle class results in a bunch of PACIFISTS?

and then the predatory snake starts to eat its own tail