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Income tax; Flat tax; National Sales tax; No tax

Which do you prefer:

  • Total voters
    133
Harshaw said:
A "fee" is something which goes to cover a specific service or specific cost. What specific service or cost does a hunting license "fee" go toward?
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Typically hunting and fishing license fees go towards the cost of the Fish and Game Service.
 
TurtleDude said:
your definitiion is not authoritative.

I pay more in taxes than 99.8% of the country.

I get nothing more in return. However, I cannot outvote 10 people who pay nothing

that is disgusting. there is no incentive for net tax consumers to vote for fiscal sanity when they keep getting without being taxed.


The koolaid is consumed by people like you who think a progressive tax is not going to ruin this nation
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Progressives taxation will not necessarily ruin this country because it has not destroyed Europe. Even if their economic growth is lower, educated people (where there is more of them in Europe) understand that too much progressive taxation will harm the economy.

If what you said about people never voting to increase taxes if they don't have to pay them is true, then explain conservative movements now and in the past in Europe.

People in Europe aren't that dumb enough to not understand that the rich can't pay all of the taxes. But people who don't pay taxes obviously have an increased incentive to increase spending over those who pay more income taxes.
 
obvious Child said:
First of all, there is significant cheating in reporting of sale tax to state revenue departments that exists today. Generally, for sales of goods, state auditors either compare a firm's sales and reported taxes with a known benchmark, namely a clean business or they audit the inventory. Most states never had the funds to fully state such departments in the first place. So do you realize you are saying that the poor system of ensuring compliance at the state level could be used nationally in realistic, simple and accurate way?

Tell me, what department at the federal level is going to hire literally hundreds of thousands if not millions of auditors to ensure compliance if we get rid of the IRS?
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The IRS currently has the resources to audit practically anyone they want to.

What one expects to happen with the national sales tax is that, instead of overseeing 300,000,000 individual citizen tax reports, it will be overseeing maybe 30,000,000 business tax filings.

You're saying the government agency currently snooping into all business and personal incomes wouldn't be able to handle just the business accounts?

Doesn't make sense.
 
Catawba said:
to vote in a majority of far right conservatives who are for a regressive tax? ;)
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Can someone explain how stealing more money from someone solely because he has more money is "progressive" and how allowing someone to keep the money he earned is "regressive"?

What kind of retarded ass-backward world do these socialists live in, anyway?
 
TurtleDude said:
your definitiion is not authoritative.

I pay more in taxes than 99.8% of the country.

I get nothing more in return. However, I cannot outvote 10 people who pay nothing

that is disgusting. there is no incentive for net tax consumers to vote for fiscal sanity when they keep getting without being taxed.


The koolaid is consumed by people like you who think a progressive tax is not going to ruin this nation
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It is possible for you to for once in your career here post a substantial post that isn't ridiculous?

Still pretending a user fee is a flat tax eh?
 
nerv14 said:
Progressives taxation will not necessarily ruin this country because it has not destroyed Europe. Even if their economic growth is lower, educated people (where there is more of them in Europe) understand that too much progressive taxation will harm the economy.

If what you said about people never voting to increase taxes if they don't have to pay them is true, then explain conservative movements now and in the past in Europe.

People in Europe aren't that dumb enough to not understand that the rich can't pay all of the taxes. But people who don't pay taxes obviously have an increased incentive to increase spending over those who pay more income taxes.
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a) The United States of America is not Europe. The Founders intended that it NOT be Europe but be the United States of America based on principles of unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It took the Europeans quite some time before they even considered looking at personal liberty as a right instead of privilege via membership in a particular group.

Those who are enamored with Europe and want the USA to now be like THEM should move there. I prefer a USA that fits the vision the Founders had for it when they gave us our Constitution.

2) I'm not sure what you are getting at here or whether I disagree or agree with you. Can you elaborate or clarify a bit?
 
nerv14 said:
You can make as many claims that you want that a universal sales tax would be unworkable from tax evasion, but I just showed you a real study (from skeptics non the less) who said that a 39.3% tax would generate enough revenue.
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The study make serious assumptions that aren't necessary true to reality. Right now with increasing fees on credit cards, firms are offering cash customers lower prices. What is preventing them from not booking them properly and reporting them? Now tell me, what will stop firms from expanding this when sales tax flies through the roof?

I looked at your other post before and there was your comment about poor tax collection of sales taxes at the state level. But I don't see any evidence for that or how your unsupported claim refutes the information that I have found.
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Read the links I posted. It is disturbing to me that more and more people are unaware of what a link looks like on a post.

and where are you getting that all inventories need to be audited?
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Because it is pretty much the only way to ensure a goods based company is reporting its total sales.

Today not everyone's income tax report is audited, and tax evasion is low enough.
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Low enough? You do realize over $500 billion is not reported no? And that's a low estimate.

Just the possibility of being audited is what makes sure that people pay their taxes, it works with the income tax, so it will work with even less collection with a universal sales tax.
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Come again? Most people are unaware that they won't get audited unless they have a few known red flags, such as a home office deduction (never ever take that). Businesses on the other hand know they have a surefire way of hiding sales. Simply don't ring up a cash sale on the register. And no, it doesn't work with income tax.

The Underground Economy - Brief Analysis #273

And that was in 1998. It's probably well over a trillion by now in unreported income.

you show some evidence about how inneficent sales tax collection is to prove me wrong...
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Perhaps you should start reading links that are posted?
 
AlbqOwl said:
It helps offsets cost of rangers who look out for good use of public lands, for evaluation of wildlife populations so that they know how many hunting licenses can be issued without excessively depleting it, printing and issuing of the licenses along with publications outlining the rules and regulations, and other necessary administrative functions. If we want the government to have a role in protecting our environment and the creatures that occupy it, it is a quite reasonable fee for services.
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Here's my question:

If this type of user fee is actually designed to cover things like that, then how come state legislatures routinely double or triple the fees in years when they have budget shortfalls? Is it because the cost of maintaining the wildlife actually tripled this year, or is it because it's entirely unrelated to the cost of maintaining the wildlife and is instead used as a general revenue raising tool?
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
The IRS currently has the resources to audit practically anyone they want to.
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Are you kidding? The IRS is one of the most understaffed organizations we have. If the IRS had the staff, they wouldn't be farming out collection work to private companies. Next to the SEC, the IRS is extremely understaffed.

What one expects to happen with the national sales tax is that, instead of overseeing 300,000,000 individual citizen tax reports, it will be overseeing maybe 30,000,000 business tax filings.
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Which are more complicated and take more time to audit based on the numerous seemingly legal ways to hide sales, not to mention outright illegal non-reporting of cash sales.

You're saying the government agency currently snooping into all business and personal incomes wouldn't be able to handle just the business accounts?

Doesn't make sense.
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Auditing an individual is a far cry from auditing the inventory of millions of companies. And I'm not even discussing auditing the services provided by firms either. That's going to be a godd@mn mess in proving accurate sales.
 
obvious Child said:
Because it is pretty much the only way to ensure a goods based company is reporting its total sales.
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Have you ever done inventory? Physically count every item you have in your store, then compare that with what you sold?

Inventory one wall mart for one year. Then all wall marts for every year.

Or.

Lie about it. For every measure there is a counter measure, in the cases where an industry has a lot of money, it is easer to cheat the system they them selves had a hand in creating.
 
RightinNYC said:
Here's my question:
Is it because it's entirely unrelated to the cost of maintaining the wildlife and is instead used as a general revenue raising tool?
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It could be due to more people wanting to participate in the task that is fined. I could be wrong though.
 
Io0011 said:
Have you ever done inventory? Physically count every item you have in your store, then compare that with what you sold?

Inventory one wall mart for one year. Then all wall marts for every year.
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Exactly. Colossal pain in the butt. And if a firm really was out to cheat, it would simply rescan the same items in a continuous system. You'd have to constantly physically audit and tag items to ensure an accurate inventory for proper sales reporting. I don't think people here realize just how much of a pain this will be.

Lie about it. For every measure there is a counter measure, in the cases where an industry has a lot of money, it is easer to cheat the system they them selves had a hand in creating.
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Given how businesses work now, forcing compliance in a national sales tax is going to be a nightmare.
 
obvious Child said:
Are you kidding? The IRS is one of the most understaffed organizations we have.
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That's good news.

Let's cut some more IRS jobs, shall we?

obvious Child said:
If the IRS had the staff, they wouldn't be farming out collection work to private companies. Next to the SEC, the IRS is extremely understaffed.
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They shouldn't be doing that anyway. Something about keeping private records private, ya know?

obvious Child said:
Which are more complicated and take more time to audit based on the numerous seemingly legal ways to hide sales, not to mention outright illegal non-reporting of cash sales.
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No, it's not complicated at all.

What were your sales this year? X dollars.

Your is X.Tax dollars.

You're trying to pretend it's more difficult to correlate a GAAP operated business than it is to sift through a bunch of individual tax returns with individual cirucmstances on each one, and then you're pretending it's more efficient to be snooping into all those lives.

I've run a business. I've taken cash and not reported it to the government. The government doesn't do the work to earn the money, so why should I be punished by being honest? Guess what? Anyone that does too much of that does wind up getting caught because the books won't add up.

Here's an real novel idea: Reduce government to the size it's supposed to be, which will reduce the taxes required, and more people will pay taxes because they'll weigh the cost benefits and choose to be honest.

Why do people cheat on taxes now? Because the government is stealing too much.

Any system that enables the oppressed a means to cheat their oppressors should be supported by everyone.

obvious Child said:
Auditing an individual is a far cry from auditing the inventory of millions of companies.
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Yeah, it's harder, since there's so damn many of them.

Then again, the average citizen can't afford a lawyer to protect themselves from their own government. That's another reason we should stop the government from intruding into people's private affairs.
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
They shouldn't be doing that anyway. Something about keeping private records private, ya know?
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What? Do you know what collections are?

No, it's not complicated at all.

What were your sales this year? X dollars.

Your is X.Tax dollars.
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Okay, what's preventing people from lying?

You're trying to pretend it's more difficult to correlate a GAAP operated business than it is to sift through a bunch of individual tax returns with individual cirucmstances on each one, and then you're pretending it's more efficient to be snooping into all those lives.
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Uh, not all businesses operate on GAAP. Furthermore, many cash basis GAAP have many ways of hiding sales. And no, the IRS doesn't go through individuals manually.

I've run a business. I've taken cash and not reported it to the government. The government doesn't do the work to earn the money, so why should I be punished by being honest? Guess what? Anyone that does too much of that does wind up getting caught because the books won't add up.
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Hence why you have two sets of books. You should know just how easy it is to hide sales.

The rest of your post is little more then diatribe that does not address why a national sales tax would be difficult to enforce,
 
I would be happy to give up a flat 1%. It would make my life alot easier and the government would make more money.
 
Currently the IRS sits atop a mountain of books called "Tax Law" that no one undestands, and it rules the roost by intimidation.

How can people, with a straight face, claim that a national sales tax would be more difficult to process?

No exemptions, no deductions, just GAAP.

The individual citizen doesn't have to fear the tax man any more.

The businessman doesn't have any complicated formulas to figure out. Just Gross Retail Sales x Tax Rate = Tax. And for that he gives up the IRS intrusion into his non-business related private affairs.

Seems to me the only people that lose are the government and it's employees.
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
Currently the IRS sits atop a mountain of books called "Tax Law" that no one undestands, and it rules the roost by intimidation.
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No one understands eh? So all of the accountants and lawyers at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, KPMG, Grant Thorton, Deloitte, and E&Y don't understand it? :rofl

How can people, with a straight face, claim that a national sales tax would be more difficult to process?
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Process? Hello, can you read? It would be more difficult to enforce compliance. Not process. Seriously. The capacity to read eludes many here.

perhaps you should get your terms straight before replying. This isn't over processing. It's over compliance.
 
apdst said:
I would be happy to give up a flat 1%. It would make my life alot easier and the government would make more money.
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Which they would spend, so they would need more money . . .
 
obvious Child said:
What? Do you know what collections are?
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Hummel Figures, right?

obvious Child said:
Okay, what's preventing people from lying?
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Gee, I know everyone is totally honest on their taxes today. You're right, we'd turn the businessmen of America into tax cheats overnight. How awful.

obvious Child said:
Uh, not all businesses operate on GAAP.
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Require it.

obvious Child said:
Furthermore, many cash basis GAAP have many ways of hiding sales. And no, the IRS doesn't go through individuals manually.
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That's what they hire proctologists for.

obvious Child said:
Hence why you have two sets of books.
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No. I didn't. You don't need extra books when you don't record sales.

obvious Child said:
You should know just how easy it is to hide sales.
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I guess you never heard of "moon lighting" and or about getting paid "under the table".

You must know that you can't base your arguments on the prevention of activities that are already in progress on a massive scale under the current system, right? I mean, your arguments are empty.

obvious Child said:
The rest of your post is little more then diatribe that does not address why a national sales tax would be difficult to enforce,
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Since I'm not saying that a national sales tax would be difficult to enforce, I'm not required to show that it would be difficult to enforce. The reality is that it would be easier to enforce, more fairly distributed across the population, and less intrusive than the current system.

You're the one that's failed to show that it's more difficult than what we've got now.
 
obvious Child said:
No one understands eh? So all of the accountants and lawyers at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, KPMG, Grant Thorton, Deloitte, and E&Y don't understand it? :rofl
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No one who reads it as an instrument of revenue collection can understand the document.

It's an instrument of societal control and oppression. And no, if it was easily understood it wouldn't require overpriced attorneys and judges to interpret.

Doesn't the fact that attorneys are used to intervene in what are essentially accounting matters by itself tell the whole story of what's wrong with the US tax code?

obvious Child said:
Process? Hello, can you read? It would be more difficult to enforce compliance. Not process. Seriously. The capacity to read eludes many here.
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You keep saying that. You can't prove it because it's not true. Reducing the complexity of the code removes the ability to confuse investigators, and reducing the number of reporting persons reduces the workload of the agency, making it easier for them to find the cheats.

obvious Child said:
perhaps you should get your terms straight before replying. This isn't over processing. It's over compliance.
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Compliance is determined by correct processing.

Simplifying processing simplifies compliance verification.

Also, Hillary Clinton would not have been able to set the IRS on Billy Dale if a national sales tax had been imposed at the time. Just another IRS issue to consider.
 
obvious Child said:
No one understands eh? So all of the accountants and lawyers at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, KPMG, Grant Thorton, Deloitte, and E&Y don't understand it? :rofl
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Well, some people understand it. Some people who can afford to pay others to understand it. I do believe government is too big, but government is people. There are too many people, making too many problems to quote Phill Collens. Population control, by means of an educated populace choosing weather or not to have children, may be a solution to a lot of our tax and spend worries.

I may be over simplifying this issue though.
 
Did Scarecrow even address anything I said?

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how auditing millions of businesses' inventory is easy.
 
Io0011 said:
Well, some people understand it. Some people who can afford to pay others to understand it.
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I'd wager that 99.999% of the tax code is irrelevant to 80% of the population. So people don't need to know it because it never applies to them. Much of the code is also due to lobbyists getting specific deductions applicable to their industries. And significant amounts to prevent abusive schemes setup by accountants and lawyers.
 
Scarecrow Akhbar said:
You're the one that's failed to show that it's more difficult than what we've got now.
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A tax on consumption will be complicated. How would you verify it? The only way I have heard would be a new-world-order-esk system of computerized banking where money does not exist. Which I think would be unenforceable, and evil if it was.

Or are you talking about some other tax method, I am a little confused.
 
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