🚀 go-pugleaf

In <4ae7d9$9rm@aimnet.aimnet.com> edwardk@aimnet.com (Edward N.
Kurmudgeon) writes: 
>
>Quentin Lewis (bigqueue@tiac.com) wrote:
>
>: But you HAVE NO CHOICE! With a sales tax, you can be a little 
>: discriminating about how much tax you give them, and how much you
save. It 
>: would be a very good incentive to save. 
>
>: You currently have very little insentive to save, and when you do,
the 
>: returns (and the already taxed income) are then taxed. You might as
well 
>: spend it and enjoy it now.
>
>
>First, I have never refrained from buying anything just because I
>didn't want to pay the sales tax.  Second, while the idea that the
>return on my savings is taxed is not palatable, I have never spent any
>money just because investing it would result in me paying tax.  All
>in all, I don't think I need to change these habits.   Are people 
>here different?
>
A national sales tax would be a misstake for the following reasons;

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.
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.
3.  This tax is popularily called a consumption tax to encourage
savings.  Why should we tax consumption?  Consumption is not bad. 
Consumption is just another phrase for prosperty and high standard of
living.  Consumtion provides emplyment. Why do we save?  We don't save
just to fill our matress with money.  We save to invest, increase
productivity and production so we can CONSUME MORE!
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! 
5.  If we are worried about the rich not paying enough tax make sure we
don't tax the rich (the productive) so high that we reduce productivity
thereby hurting everyone.  If we need more taxes from the wealthy tax
their estates after they die.  This has the added advantage of slowing
the growth of a wealthy and too powerful aristocracy.

Bill Mechlenburg