🚀 go-pugleaf

zik@enoch.cl.msu.edu (Ed Symanzik) wrote:

>Bill Mechlenburg (mechlen@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
>: 1.  A national sales tax would have to be in the order of 30 to 40% on
>: top of state and local sales tax to produce enough revenue to replace
>: the present income tax.  This high a tax would be a huge incentive for
>: cheating and evasion requiring a bureaucratic army of auditors and
>: enforcers.

>Only 18% if there were no exceptions.


ONLY 18%?????
Over 70% of all taxpayers now pay a marginal tax rate of 15%.
with a LOT of exemptions (standard deduction and personal
exemptions).

A NRST is a loser, because the middle-class is not clamoring for
the massive tax increase they'd have to pay.


>: 2.  A national sales tax would be regressive in the extreme.  It would
>: massively increase the cost of living adding millions to the number of
>: people in poverty, on welfare and on income supplimentation schemes. 
>: At the very time we should be shrinking welfare and all of it's
>: problems we would be increasing it.

>Every business that touches any item you buy is currently passing on its
>corporate income tax to you.  I've seen estimates that this increases the
>cost of goods 30% to 50%.  A $100 bag of groceries would cost *less* after 
>switching to a NST.  ($100/1.3)*1.18 = $90.77.  

Bull-puckey.  The corporate income tax, even if it was passed along,
would add roughly 3% -- and more than half of all economic activity
come from companies who don't pay it.

THINK.  The corporate incoe tax is 34% of PROFITS, not 30-50%
of gross sales.


>: 4.  The most logical and direct way to encourage adequit saving is to
>: stop punishing it by taxing it.  We tax the interest on savings and the
>: specious interest that is inflation.  We double tax investment in
>: businesses by taxing their profit and then taxing the dividends paid to
>: the stock holders.  We tax capital gains punishingly by not allowing
>: for inflation which can and does result in taxing fictious profit and
>: in some instances taxing an actual loss! 

>Yes.  A NST is just what we need.

There are many ways to eliminate the problems he mentions, without
creating a massive tax increase on the poor and middle class -- which
is what a NRST would do.

Only 18%??????


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Michael J. Hihn,Editor/Publisher, Liberty Issues
liberty@prostar.com
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