Irrelevant. The point is that a sales tax would reduce the filings and their complexity. A VAT does nothing, in this regard.
But we're talking about ELIMINATING the income tax with the "Fair Tax". Without that, any VAT is a real economy crusher.
It's a lot easier to track just sales to non-exempt entities.
Completely irrelevant. With the "Fair Tax" there is no income tax. All that stuff is *gone*.
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Who says that there will _be_ any rebate? WA needs money and i bet they will be the getter and keeper of ALL taxes.
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Yeah, it's a nice concept, but I'll eat my toque if that happens in my lifetime, Ron Paul and company notwithstanding.
The numbers just don't make any sense, not to mention the political problems of getting US states (and counties, and even cities) to abandon personal income tax and corporate income tax.
Short of a CCCP-style retrenchment (which would necesarily involve an enormous reduction in the real value of so-called defense spending and "entitlement" programs such as Social Security), I don't see it happening.
OTOH, a VAT might be a way to sustain the status quo without crushing the economy to make up for all the neglect and deficit spending. Either way we're scr*wed.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
For most "customers" the rebates just decrease the net tax payable (to the tax on the "Value added", that's where the acronym comes from).
Net rebates are for big exporters and companies with no revenue but lots of expenses (eg. R&D companies in the early years).
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Problem with a VAT in the USA: Sales taxes are currently collected at the state and/or local level. There is no such thing as a federal sales tax at this time.
If (or when) the US gov't implements VAT, I seriously doubt the local jurisdictions are going to give up their own tax schemes. So we're going to get hit twice.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Time's fun when you're having flies. -- Kermit the Frog
Importer pays , sells to a wholesaler for $10 net + $2 VAT = $12 gross, who sells to a retailer for $15 net + $3 VAT = $18 gross, who sells to the consumer for $20 net + $4 VAT = $24 gross.
The retailer owes $4 minus the $3 he paid to the wholesaler so pays $1. The wholesaler owes $3 minus the $2 he paid to the importer so pays $1. The importer owes $2 and pays $2. The taxman ends up getting $4 (20% of the net final sale price).
But suppose the "consumer" is actually a small trader who ends up selling the item for $25 net + $5 VAT = $30 gross, he owes $5 minus the $4 he paid the retailer, so pays $1 (so the taxman is still getting 20% of the net final sale price).
In essence, VAT is like sales tax but treats every step in the chain as a final sale until it actually turns out otherwise.
The practical effect is that it pushes tax collection up the chain.
Firstly, there's no opportunity for an end user to avoid paying the sales tax at the time of purchase (by claiming to be a reseller) and leaving the tax authorities to chase down "use tax" on individual purchases.
Secondly, even if the final seller manages to evade paying sales tax, the state only loses out on the final portion of the tax, collecting the tax on the previous (e.g. wholesale) price instead.
You're a goddamned US hating retard!
Its just the numbers. The non discretionary plus the interest vs what the tax revenue will be after the cuts.
How exactly would you cut the spending by 1/3rd? Most of the spending is based on promises made in the past. If you start breaking some promises, people will assume that you can break them all. Doing this would crash the economy.
The violations of treaties would cause international trade to reduce. The economy would tank.
No it is about correct incentives vs perverse incentives. If you pay people more to fiddle with numbers that do real stuff, lots of numbers will be fiddled and less real stuff will be done.
"Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@Hovnanian.com:
THREE,if you count the Income Tax. does Germany have an income tax?
-- Jim Yanik jyanik at localnet dot com
@Hovnanian.com:
Yes.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
Says the retard who represents that aspect of the US that one might reasonably dislike.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
The deeper-down problem in Europe is the declining productivity and critically low birth rates. That has been building for decades. You can hardly blame any of that on mortgages in the USA.
John
And why do you think that European productivity is declining? As the poorer countries get up-rated - as Ireland was - there's more investment in manufacturing, and the prodcutivity rises rather falls.
As for the low birth rates, wait a generation. Some women like kids, some don't. Modern contraception makes it easier for the one that don't to avoid them, but that just means that evolution will get the birt rate back into equilibrium in a generation or two.
The changing age structure of the population owes more to modern health care keeping more people alive and healthy inot their seventies than it does to the low birth rate, and there's no evidence that it is doing any damage to the economy.
The Greeks are in a mess because they didn't pay their taxes, not because their demographics were distorted.
You do like you right-wing fables. Try mastering a few facts before retailing dim-witted Republican feel-good propaganda.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
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s tGot any statistics on the "decline" in the consumption productivity ratio? It sounds like more of your usual right-wing wishful thinking to me
The Dutch do have funny ideas about when people ough to retire. It doesn't make their economy noticeably less productive than their neighbours' - they've been educating their workers and mechanising manufacturing and agriculture for quite a while now and those people who are young enough to be allowed to work are very productive.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
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ou
.maybe, but it doesn't help that the pension age is something like 60
if everyone wants to go to school till they are 25, retire at 60 and live till their 80s possible thanks to more advanced(expensive) healthcare. They have to get enough kids to support that.
my, possible wrong, impression is that part of the problem in greece was that the public workers basically had the voting power to pick the government that would give them the biggest pay check
democracy seem to work best when there's a reasonable balance between the givers and the takers
-Lasse
The problem with that approach is that it's basically a human Ponzi scheme. Each generation has to be larger than the preceding one, which can't continue forever. Or, in Europe, for very long; the EU has around
3.5 times the population density of the US, and isn't far behind China (~112 people/km^2 versus ~140).As Bill suggests, this is a transitional phase, with life expectancy having grown steadily since the end of WW2 while birth rates have fallen. Most of the EU is already increasing the retirement age.
The other part of the problem was that the wealthy didn't care as they weren't paying for it; Greece has about the weakest tax enforcement (of non-salary income) in the developed world.
Greece's problem was that the balance was between the takers and the keepers. There weren't any givers.
It's unwise to generalise the Greek situation to the EU generally. Northern Europeans find it easier to comprehend the notions of comprise and trade-offs. Greece has the problem that if you don't pay the workers they'll riot but if you try to tax the rich they'll mount a coup. Dividing the cake is a lot less contentious if you can materialise a second cake out of thin air.
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If the previous tax paid isn't rebated, it's called a "gross receipts tax". They tried this one in Vermont. Amazingly, saner heads prevailed.
Wouldn't surprise me. The left coast is as crazy as Vermont.
If it ever happens, it'll be in the next ten years. It's gained a lot of notice by the tea partiers. A VAT only makes sense if the income tax is repealed.
There is nothing that says they have to abandon their current system, other than they wouldn't have Uncle Sam for the tax structure.
Read some of Paul Ryan's stuff. His plan "pays" the national debt off by reductions in growth of such things, delaying retirement, and other such things. It's certainly worth a look.
If nothing is done we're screwed, sure. It might not be too late, but even if not the *dead*line is fast approaching and Obummer is speeding it up greatly.
Wrong. Join DimBulb and Slowman in the AlwaysWrong-of-the-Month contest.
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You're positively *wrong* (you just pulled ahead of Slowman in early week scoring). There is no violation of any treaty here. In fact, it's precisely what every other country already does.
So make the tax *FLAT* (a VAT does this). There is then no screwing with it.
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