The Fair Tax

[Twfan55]

This thread is branching off from the Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, so I thought I would make a poll.

Do you support the fair tax?

Here are my views:

Yes, over the Income Tax. I believe that people would understand the impact of taxation on their wallets and it would reward people for being self-sufficient.

If I had my way, I would get rid of the Income Tax and not replace it with anything, and go back to the way the country has been taxing since before the income tax. This would make voters understand the importance of fiscal sanity and encourage privitization of Social Security and Medicare to keep the USA from straying towards Socialism.

Ideally, I voted over the Income Tax, but ideally get rid of both.

[Lunar4]

lovin the poll atm

[Hound of Ulster]

Simplify the taxcode (its just too confusing and ineffieciant) but the Republic needs revenue in order to govern itself.

[Chlodwig I.]

If you want to see a complicated Tax-System come to Germany

just think about this one 50% of all books and media published on Tax and Taxsystems are German

[Sidmen]

just think about this one 50% of all books and media published on Tax and Taxsystems are German

They all say the same thing tho. "Take your income; subtract 10,000; take 37% of that, thats your owed tax"

[Chlodwig I.]

They all say the same thing tho. "Take your income; subtract 10,000; take 37% of that, thats your owed tax"

not really

they say take your income subtract
the tax free income one time (or two times if you are married)
reduce a certain amount depending on the number of your kids if you don't take child money if you take the money no substraction,
substract 21 cent for your way to work from the 20th km on
subtract spendings for old age pension reduced by your personal taxrate,
reduce the spendings on job education etc,
do you have a child in collage? reduce your income with the amount for the cost for the rent of the student apartment.
mortgage? perfect reduce your income by the intrest amount.
you are selfemployed and hafe a office at home, perfect you can reduce your income by a certain amount
but not if you got a couch in it then its considered a living room.
and thats just the easy stuff,
its almost impossible in my country to fill in a tax form corectly
most people have a tax lawyer to help them
but at least you can reduce your taxable income by the amount of his fee.


We have taxes on almost everything, income(15-42%), insurances, beer, oil (80cent per litre) etc.
on top is in addition always 19% VaT so many things are double taxed.
and if you count in income tax its trippled
and if you count in taxes on inheritance its a 4 times taxation
and it could be 5 times if they can recreate the fortune tax

and don't forget that you also spend 20% of your income (before tax) on social security (healthcare, old age pension, unemployment)
+ a so called "solidarity" tax for the rebuilding of east germany,

[fatsheep]

The fair tax sounds like a good proposal but neither Mccain or Obama will implement it.

[Rush Limbaugh]

for it to be a decent replacement of income tax (and working on the bases you dont inflict massive budget cuts on the US military, etc. you proberly would have to.

Its in the plan. We dont pay sales taxes now on nessicities.

[fatsheep]

Its in the plan. We dont pay sales taxes now on nessicities.

In my state, KY, I believe we pay sales taxes on everything except food.

EDIT:

Prescription medicines are also exempt apparently:

The state of Kentucky has a 6.0% sales tax with exemptions for food and prescription medications.

- http://www.money-zine.com/Financial-...les-Tax-Rates/

That link has a brief description of every state's sales tax.

[LoZz]

what is "fair" tax?

isnt income/outcome tax about as fair as it gets?

[Twfan55]

Fair Tax is a national sales tax. They call it fair because people get taxed on Consumption, not Income.

[Rush Limbaugh]

They call it fair because its the same percentage across the board. Everyone pays the same.

Its still not fair though. But its better than what we have now and dosent violate the constitution a far as I can see like the present system. Again it only violates it if you believe what the IRS tells you.

[LoZz]

Fair Tax is a national sales tax. They call it fair because people get taxed on Consumption, not Income.

ooo, sales tax, VAT. right. well, unless you set it stupidly high, its not enough to scrap income.

but again, its not really 100% fair. it means the rich will get richer, and poor familes will suffer.

children = more food, more clothes, more fuel. more everything!!!

with sales tax/vat being so high to replace income tax, poor people arent going to be able to afford the vitals.

[Rush Limbaugh]

hildren = more food, more clothes, more fuel. more everything!!!

Non taxable. Plus the poor get credits.

[LoZz]

Non taxable. Plus the poor get credits.

for it to be a decent replacement of income tax (and working on the bases you dont inflict massive budget cuts on the US military, etc. you proberly would have to.

[Big War Bird]

ooo, sales tax, VAT. right. well, unless you set it stupidly high, its not enough to scrap income.

but again, its not really 100% fair. it means the rich will get richer, and poor familes will suffer.

children = more food, more clothes, more fuel. more everything!!!

with sales tax/vat being so high to replace income tax, poor people arent going to be able to afford the vitals.

The Fair rebates every household the tax it pays on necessities, making it a progressive tax. It is the only tax regime that would completely eliminate all taxation of the poor.

[fatsheep]

Here's the Fair Tax website.

Apparently it's a 23% flat national sales tax. It would eliminate all other federal taxes such as the FICA payroll tax (Social Security tax).

[Senno]

I support the Fair Tax generally. As I have been posting, we apparently have a 19.5% tax now, at the Federal level.

The politicians just divide the pie differently, either to promote supply, or to promote demand.

I'd rather them get out of the way, and let the semi-free market we have work.

[JP226]

I'm working on something fairly substantial now about taxes. While it's not this topic specifically, it does relate.

The issue I have with the fair tax is what's the point? Honestly. No matter how complex the code is, we have computers and programs to figure out the dollar amount you owe. More importantly, taxes (as one of the premise of my research) is that you can lower them one of two ways, exemptions and physical amounts/ percentages. Which is easier, is it easier to say we can exempt surf boards if you surf on monday wednesday friday locked into some obscure bill or is it easier to come out and state a percentage? Politically of course. You close down an avenue of tax reduction when you outlaw exmeptions across the board.

[Senno]

I'm working on something fairly substantial now about taxes. While it's not this topic specifically, it does relate.

The issue I have with the fair tax is what's the point? Honestly. No matter how complex the code is, we have computers and programs to figure out the dollar amount you owe. More importantly, taxes (as one of the premise of my research) is that you can lower them one of two ways, exemptions and physical amounts/ percentages. Which is easier, is it easier to say we can exempt surf boards if you surf on monday wednesday friday locked into some obscure bill or is it easier to come out and state a percentage? Politically of course. You close down an avenue of tax reduction when you outlaw exmeptions across the board.

The point to me is that the government isn't good at picking winners and losers. When they feed the demand side, they create an inequity that they have to address by some other measure. Law of unintended consequences. Same issue arises when they feed the "supply" side. Unintended consequences, never-ending.

When they give tax breaks to encourgage investment in one place, they must by necessity balance it out by sticking it to someone else. As we see, we effectively have a 19.5% fed flat tax now.

For many years, the middle class has been the stickee, not the sticker. That needs to change, no sticks would be best, while still allowing our economy to grow in a natural way. We wouldn't be over-taxing capital gains to achieve the goal of a level playing field.

Do you see a better way to level out the field?

That's the bottom line issue to me.