Gould,
What do you think of using a VAT (Value Added Tax) similar to the tax used
in most of Europe?



"Gould 0738" wrote in message
...
national sales tax.

National sales tax.
Pretty sad.

If you're poor, 100% of whatever you earn will be taxed- at the 25 or 30%
usually floated as the proposed number for such a tax.

Most of the working poor we call the "middle class" these days is up to
its
butt in consumer debt as well- how many of us know several families who
transferred consumer credit card debt into 30-year bonds secured against
their
home (!) in the last year or two? No break for these people at the 25 or
30
percent tax rate, either. Most are paying less tax now.

Who comes out on top? The well off, the wealthy, and the shockingly rich.
A
family earning $1mm a year, but spending only a thousand a day on
consumption
(spending money at that rate would be almost a full time job) will have
about
1/3 of its income taxed at that 25 percent rate- or will pay roughly about
8%
of its income in taxes.

A $10mm a year family, spending $100,000 a month on consumption, would pay
a
whalloping 3% of its income in taxes.

Let's see he If you sweep the floor at WalMart, you will wind up
spending
everything you earn and pay 30% of your income to the government in a tax.
If
you *own* WalMart, you can't possibly figure out how to spend all the
money
coming in
and your tax bill will drop to a couple of percent of your income.

No wonder the right wing likes this idea.
The economics are right out of those two fine traditions, feudalism and
sharecropping.

Funny thing is, most of those red states are filled with itsy bitsy towns
and
farms where people do pretty well to make it to the middle class. The red
states get screwed the worst.......the gazillionaires living in
California, the
NE and the Pacific NW, in the "blue states", benefit the most from a tax
that
targets what you put into the marketplace, rather than taxing what you
extract
from it.

You think we've got an "underground" economy now? Just wait until they
roll out
a 25-30% national sales tax. Of course it willbe the rich, paying the
tiniest
percentage in tax, who will go to the most exotic and extraordinary
lengths to
pay even less. :-)