Originally posted by SweetChild
Some states ALREADY pay consumption tax - Texas for instance. We pay 8.25 percent on every dollar we spend, except for food and medicine. We also pay taxes on all utilities and all services. A consumption tax would tax everything at 20 percent or more in this backassard state! People will stop buying. The economy would fail. Yeah! Great idea, let's collapse the economy!

Using Texas as an example, 28% of the cars on the road in Harris county are unregistered and uninsured. Over 40 % of the fees you pay for your own auto insurance cover uninsured motorists. Crazy amounts are spent at the county and state level for healthcare and social programs for illegals. And amongst all this, property taxes are amongst the highest in the country (for example, we paid $6k/yr for a 170k house whereas in Michigan our annual property taxes for a 215k home were $2100).

Flat tax or consumption tax would balance the playing field. There are tens of millions of illegal persons paying no tax, working under the table, utilizing services meant for citizens, and laughing about how stupid we all are. Living in Texas for ten years, I met plenty of illegals who had a lot nicer stuff then I did. If you impart a heavy consumer tax, then it only affects the people that consume. Buy alcohol, cars, big screen tv's = pay a tax. Staples of living are not taxed, so the poor are not unfairly imposed upon.

Even if they came out with a Consumption Tax (Fair Tax Act) or a Value Added Tax (Europe) it will probably still be administered by the IRS which is also instrumental in ObamaCare.

Most members here are making arguments without understanding the concept behind the fair tax. The fair tax institutes a prebate program that will help the lower class and alleviate alot of the tax burden they would receive. i.e. the argument placed earlier that a man with an income who uses 95% of his income shares more of a burden is wrong. He first gets a prebate determined by family size and income. This alleviates a majority of his tax burden... Secondly he only gets taxed on new items... not used goods... no more property taxes i.e. vehicle registration taxes...

The fair tax awards fiscal conservative planning and spending. It promotes savings and fiscal responsibility. It ends the IRS and implements a smaller less complex system and smaller entity to collect those taxes. The amount of money gained from a fair tax is almost more than double what the current income tax receives... Companies now have an incentive to return to the US and the country as a whole begins a growth in wealth. This in turn will create deflation and will put more buying power in the hands of the people.

What people arent considering is how many times things are taxed by the time you receive them. You are paying the corporations taxes in the price of goods... They pass that cost on to you!!! So all in all unless the 50k salary guy is buying new boats and what not he will not be taxed the 95% of his income!!! Most likely a 50k income house hold would spend about $5k in taxes before prebates..... Think about that...


READ THE FAIR TAX FACTS BEFORE MAKING FALSE POINTS!!!

This is completely ass backwards like most of what the GOP comes up with. We need to tax income that is not spent on consumption. If you make a million and spend it all on non-assets than you pay no tax. We need to reward spending, not punish it.

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical
This is completely ass backwards like most of what the GOP comes up with. We need to tax income that is not spent on consumption. If you make a million and spend it all on non-assets than you pay no tax. We need to reward spending, not punish it.

Incorrect, we need to reward Employment and saving.

If they do this it will be a nightmare of paperwork for THEM. Those of us who are tax exempt will have to put our exemption #'s on every single purchase. Most, if not all, places that we purchase from have no clue about tax exempt status. It can be very difficult. If they abolish the IRS, who would take over all the tax matters? They are the bookkeepers/collection agents for the fed res.

Fairtax is simple. You pay a one time consumption tax on new goods only. You do not pay tax on used goods or business to business purchases (ie a car company buying 5000 tires for its production line.)
Also, everyone gets a prebate paid to them, based on marital status (ie Married and 3 kids), it is income independent. This will be paid directly too you, in the form of a monthly check. The only way you can get it, is to be a legal citizen. If you are a illegal citizen you do not get the prebate money, but you do get to pay the consumption tax. The tax code is approx. 200 pages long, that is all.

This would save the USA financially. All who want actual change for the better should support this!
Income tax is deeply unfair: It punishes the honest people who work and contribute to the country.
The criminals, thieves, gangsters, banksters, drug dealers etc. all benefit from income tax, because they do not declare an income.
But CONSUME they all want, their cars, jewellery and what have you.
So YES, the most SOCIAL and FAIR tax is on consumption, not on work.
GO FOR IT!

Originally posted by WaterBottle
All a consumption tax would do is hurt the poor/middle class. As you can see it already does with the sales tax, which is a consumption tax.

It wouldn't affect rich people as much because they have more money to spare.

Not fair at all. GOP keeps playing it's fan base like a fiddle and they keep buying it for whatever reason. Even when it's directly against their own interests.

edit on 7-1-2013 by WaterBottle because: (no reason given)

The purpose of taxation should be to fund the legitimate functions of government. Not to makes things "fair" not for social engineering not to "save the environment" not to encourage or discourage behavior. A consupmtion tax would be much better than the current system of 20,000 pages of loopholes and deductions. A person could reduce his tax bill by not consuming as much.

This may have been mentioned but the biggest problem I see with FairTax ( I love the idea ) is the number of jobs it would eliminate ..

IRS has something like over 100,000 employees.. what about all of the tax firms out there like H&R Block? wouldn't those places be obsolete?

I mean FairTax is the way to go in my mind but I think it would be a hard pill to swallow due to all of the job losses that would instantly happen.. Wikipedia actually has a section about that on their FairTax page

During the transition, many or most of the employees of the IRS (105,978 in 2005)[35] would face loss of employment.[36] The Beacon Hill Institute estimate is that the federal government would be able to cut $8 billion from the IRS budget of $11.01 billion (in 2007), reducing the size of federal tax administration by 73%.[36] In addition, income tax preparers (many seasonal), tax lawyers, tax compliance staff in medium-to-large businesses, and software companies which sell tax preparation software (such as Drake Software, TaxCut, and TurboTax), could face significant drops, changes, or loss of employment.[17] Proponents state the income tax industry often provides year round services for financial planning and investment, which is expected to increase under the FairTax proposal and could offset some of these changes.[37] New technologies used by the IRS, such as e-filing, are simplifying the process and already threatening a portion of this industry as goals set by Congress call for at least 80% of federal returns to be submitted electronically by 2007.[38] According to IRS testimony from 2004, 45% of revenue agents and officers would become eligible for retirement in the following 5 years and there is concern about the loss of their work force as their hiring efforts struggle to keep pace with attrition.[39] In addition, the IRS would not go completely out of commission until 3 years after the FairTax was enacted, providing employees time to find other employment.[1] Proponents claim the projected 10.5% growth in the economy during the first year of the FairTax would provide plenty of new jobs to these workers that are typically well educated and well equipped with transferable skills

Not gonna pass even if it did would not be all that great not great at all for the average Joe, most taxes are a scam anyways, very few actually do anything other then just funnel money to other hands. Taxing consumption its not going to happen because it would put a plug on our entire society as that is what our society is about..consumption. Most who consume are off course the middle class, if you tax them on consumption our whole train ride will come to a complete stop, and the gravy train for the upper classes will cease as no one will be buying that much stuff, and the rich make $$$ off that consumption that's why there the rich and that's how the system works.

And most of the $$ they make, is put back in to the system to make sure the system works in there favor, and so if they got millions or billions they go to capital hill to buy favors and incentives. And because that is how they were programed by the higher echelons, and the whole thing serves purposes on higher levels. Anyways usually in any transaction be it business or just making anything like a tool, or a house, or anything really, everybody who is involved is usually paid a % of the total work and energy and effort they put it, the whole tax thing, or the whole work for "time" thing or hourly wage is just a way to bypass that and to funnel the most amount of energy put in to making something and $$$ into the top branches of the pyramid, and that's why you got people in such places like China and other places, working 12 to 20 hours a day and making pennies per hour while the things that they made are sold elsewhere at a gross income, and who do you think sees that profit? Not them that's for sure, the majority of them basically they work for the privilege to pay bills and taxes.

I mean think about it. In any company or business you usually sell a product, or anything involved in making and moving that product to the buyers, the buyers of that product is the middle class, ie the masses, we even have whole sections of jobs and business set up to more effectively do that, that is sell things to the masses. The most effort time and energy put in to making anything is usually by the masses, and usually by somebody else in a factory in some other country, or at least for now till technology goes in overdrive and humans become obsolete.

But point in case, in any sane or normal society that energy or of any of that transaction would be spreed within equal measures to the effort put in to those making it. So technically they get paid a percentage no matter what they do and depending on what the products sell for as stake in the company to sort of say, which is what most business people or rich people deal in... percentages of the profits. The masses however get paid by the time they put in, and there even taxed on that. And since there is a big discrepancy in the whole process of it, and since time is a constrictive creation used to subjugate or imprison minds, basically its just a way that has been installed into making sure that things are always going to be lopsided in any given transaction, and that peoples is the secret to business, ie trapping whole generations and minds into lopsided paradigms so you can make a profit off it.

But you know that's how the whole work unions thing got started and was about, and it gets more complicated from there, as power corrupts. But needless to say most things coming down the wire, no they are not going to be good for you, or likely in your interest. Likely they will just be dressed in such a way as the masses will buy it. It is the business that they are in after all, and like I said its what those in power or the rich invest in, molding the minds of the masses into the things which are beneficial for them, but sold in such a way that no one will be none the wiser.

So ya this thing is not going to pass, not because it wont be good or better for most people, but because our whole system and society will come to a dead grind, and there are a lot of people and middle men heavily invested in keeping the whole thing going and in keeping the masses consuming, its there job, what they were programed to do, you now educated. And also it's what the dog and pony show is about.