🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4q92dh$3o6@mercury.mcs.com>, Chris D. Silva <cds@MCS.COM> wrote:
>Gary Peterson (ftg@cc.gatech.edu) wrote:
>: In article <4q7sk1$ug@nntpa.cb.lucent.com>,
>: avram.r.vener <rudy@cbnews.cb.att.com> wrote:
>: >What is H.R. 3039?  It is a bill indtroduced by Representative
>: >Dan Schaefer to replace the Income Tax with a fifteen percent
>: >national sales tax.  
>
>: Ah, the "Let's give the rich even MORE money, screw the poor
>: and middle class" tax.
>
>How does this compute?  If I make 10,000 a year, I would pay 1,500.00
>Now If I made 100,000 a year I would pay 15,000 a year. 
> Fifteen percent is fifteen percent.
>

The NST (National Sales Tax) is a CONSUMPTION tax, not an income
tax.  It benefits everyone who is willing to spend within their means.

1.  Exemption for food/housing means that a very POOR family using
few consumer goods (buying clothes at thrift shops for $3, buying
food and housing with their money, and using wits and imagination
for entertainment instead of Nintendos and movies) would pay much
less than 15% of their income.  Ditto for the frugal saving for
their primary residence (which would also be exempt from taxation).

2.  Everyone else will be encouraged to save a greater percentage
of income for retirement, education, home ownership, as the money
saved will not be taxed until it is spent on goods and some services.
I think it's safe to say that most people do not save money in a
mattress, so their will be more money in savings accounts, mutual
funds, and stocks.  Contrary to popular belief, saving money in this
manner is not a selfish act.  It makes resources available to the
productive -- business loans, capital for corporations, etc.  This
availability of resources allows people to be more productive and
to "make" more money (money *is* made as well as passed from hand
to hand).  It benefits both the investor/saver and everyone who has
a job with the organization which the investor/saver is helping to
fund.

3.  *Everyone* will be taxed.  Drug dealers will no longer be able
to avoid taxation -- they'll catch it when they buy their car, or
go out to dinner.  Eliminating the income tax will also *decriminalize*
a lot of people who basically want to do the right thing but fall
on the wrong side of the IRS.  

State sales taxes are collected with very little paperwork (the store
files a few forms a year for taxes paid by hundreds or thousands of
individuals).  The way things are with the federal income tax, paperwork
accumulates by the mound for each individual. 

Up with the consumption tax.

 
-- 
Maureen Eagle, EMORY '91C '96G      |"Progo, will the star be
Internet:  maureen@mathcs.emory.edu | named?"
  Vanderbilt School of Law '99      |"He calls them all by name," 
         **Carpe Cavy**             | the cherubim said.