TAX DAY! Is Everybody Happy?

[missouriboy]

It's April 15, the traditional Pay Your Taxes Day in the U.S., so I thought I'd start a new topic about the FairTax, a bill in Congress to abolish the Income Tax and the IRS, and replace them with a National Consumption tax. This proposal is at least 10 years old, and is Bipartisan.

As most of you may know, there is currently a Presidential Special Commission operating right now, to study ways to simplify our Federal income tax system. An Open Letter has been written to this Commission (and to many members of Congress, and the President) by about eighty expert economists, one a Nobel Prize winner. This letter is a very good description of what the FairTax is. Click the link to read it; it's only three pages (plus the names and titles of all the signatories).

LINK

[MJ_KC]

As a mattter of fact I am happy. My taxes were easy to fill out and I am getting a nice refund.

[Sir Oink]

I think it would have to be defined more than a simple tax. For example, what happens the year I have to go and buy a car? Needs a little more clarification in my opinion.

[missouriboy]

quote:

Needs a little more clarification in my opinion.

Hmmm... you're right. I should have also given the link to the main website, where one can find all the details for clarification: www.fairtax.org

[FireProf]

I guess we're happy.......our taxes have been done and we already got our refund back from the state and feds. At least I didn't have to pay them the other 1/2 of what they already took!!

[Nude in the North]

The taxes are done,
The refund is spent.
I wonder where,
The money went.

"what happens the year I have to go and buy a car?"
I guess that will be the year you pay a bit more tax. Sounds fair to me.

The system we have now is pretty screwed up. I all for change. In fact after paying my taxes Change is about all I have.

Steve

[Qikdraw]

Isn't this just another "sales tax"? Which would then hit the poorer people harder than the rich people.

They need to just close the tax loopholes the rich are using to pay less tax. And also add payroll tax to money made from investments.

Qikdraw

[MJ_KC]

quote:

Originally posted by Qikdraw:
Isn't this just another "sales tax"? Which would then hit the poorer people harder than the rich people.

They need to just close the tax loopholes the rich are using to pay less tax. And also add payroll tax to money made from investments.

Qikdraw

A possibility would be a VAT like many Euoropean countries use. You could exempt some of lifes essentials so poor people get relief and everthing else has a tax. That way, rich people have to pay if they want to spend any of their money. Imagine the tax on a yacht or $300,000 car or a $10 million house.

I would suggest that a first home up to a specified amount should be exempt. You could base the exempt value on the prevailing price for a house with a modest amount of square footage. Go from $0 at that amount, to 100% of the VAT at twice that price of home.

The way things are now, all you have to do to avoid paying most state and federal income taxes is to start a home based business. I know people who have done this and they pay a sharply reduced amount of taxes. Some of the things they can deduct is rediculous.

[nudeM]

I filed an extension again. Uncle Sam will have to wait for his share. Afterall, he doesn't wait to take it.

[TimO\'C]

quote:

Originally posted by nudeM:
I filed an extension again. Uncle Sam will have to wait for his share. Afterall, he doesn't wait to take it.

Couldn't agree more. One of the biggest con jobs in history is the Feds persuading everyone that they're getting "extra" money in the form of a tax refund. I have long believed we should do two things: 1) eliminate withholding and make everyone write out a check once a year, and 2) move election day to the day after those checks are due, then see how many Congressional incumbents keep their jobs for years and support ongoing tax hikes. Neither has a pope's prayer of actually happening, so a national consumption tax is the next best thing, I think. If you want to promote the growth of something--like investment--then reduce the taxation on it. If you want to dampen certain economic activity, tax it and you'll get less of it. A simple historical formula.

As to the argument that it would fall "disproportionately" on the less affluent, I think MJ KC has some good ideas. But I don't agree that half the population should pay virtually no taxes, as is currently the case. People are inherently cavalier with something if they don't pay for it, e.g. government programs. You pay more attention and use things more carefully if you pay for them. I think making everyone pay something would inculcate a more general sense of proprietorship. Can't see what would be wrong about that.

[missouriboy]

The reason I asked, "Is Everybody Happy?" was to get a sense of how people feel about how the current system intrudes into your personal life, and privacy, and the way you must keep records, and reveal to outsiders your own personal business. The way the IRS can audit your activities, demand more money, take your property, put you in prison. The way tax consequences influence your saving, investment, spending, and other important decisions that should be private. We're all under the thumb of a highly repressive Gestapo agency of the sort America was never meant to have. This is NOT freedom!

We could be free from all that, and pay about the same amount of tax, without all the record-keeping, harassment, deadlines, fear of prosecution, and humongous compliance costs that the old system has morphed into.

The opportunity is now, to abolish the IRS, the payroll tax and the income tax, repeal the 16th Amendment, and replace all that with a simple, fair, single-level national sales tax that's paid at the cash register just like the state sales tax is done now in 45 states.

The present system rewards consumption and punishes production. This is backwards!

The FairTax reverses that, to encourage education, savings, investment, and productivity, by NOT taxing those things at all, and instead taxing all consumption that is over and above the basic essentials of day to day life.

This is about the big question, folks, not the little details.
(For those, read and digest the letter at the link, and find the details at the website.)

The question is, wouldn't you and yours be happier if all of America would be out from under the chains of this oppressive monster once and for all? And our country would return to being the Free Country it was intended to be?

[Nude in the North]

quote:

Isn't this just another "sales tax"? Which would then hit the poorer people harder than the rich people.

Poor people Rarely buy a 2 million dollar lake home. Or a $50,000 car.
Yet Rich people seem to manage to get these things and use them for a Tax Write off.

If the Rich were forced to pay their fair share of tax on EVERYTHING, the poor wouldn't have to pay any. And the Middle Class income people wouldn't have to carry the entire burden.

I can see a positive side to that.

Steve

[missouriboy]

"the poor wouldn't have to pay any"

Right. Under the FairTax, they DON'T pay any federal tax. Not even Social Security tax, the most regressive part of the current system, yet they will still have the same SS benefits as now.

[Paniga]

come to canada my dad pays 40% income tax. then when we go shopping we pay another 15% sales tax

[missouriboy]

Yes, Paniga, socialism tends to be like that. And then our friend Croydon has the temerity to tell us that "in Canada, healthcare is free."

(EDITED to rectify an incorrect attribution.)