William Gifford, MBA, writes:
Congress should eliminate the current system altogether. Throw out the federal income tax because it’s too broken to be fixed.
In it’s place, I think we should pass something like the VAT in Europe: a federal sales tax. Think about it. Rather than penalize people for making more money, a federal sales tax would only apply when you spent money. Everyone spends money so everyone pays tax, instead of how it works now with the top taxpayers paying for everyone else. And everyone is paying the same rate.
I know that many people will say that a federal sales tax will be unfair to the poor, so I would suggest exempting necessities like food and medicine.
When you tax income, you are giving people a disincentive to make more money. This way, people can make more money without getting a penalty. But if they spend their money, it benefits everyone.
This works very well in most European countries. I think we should try it.
yes , w need national sales tax, even the politiians would have to pay there fair share,
As I recall the rate would need to be 30% to 40%. Can you imagine the black market that would encourage. Not to mention what it would do to economic activity. My income tax is small in comparision. If the cost of buying goods increased by 30% to 40% I am sure most people would cease buying anything but food.
not going to see the nationwide sales tax replacing the income tax. The income tax is a convenient mechanism to give out all the socialized benefits to help those that don’t pay any taxes anywhichways.
Amazing when you see that some people want to argue the poor with small children pay sales taxes etc. NO THEY DON’T. The earned income credits and now this year the child tax credit is going to be refunable with only $3k income. Those credits pay the sales taxes, unless the credit all went to marijuana. The people that get all the welfare benefits vote for the democrats so they keep on getting all the freebies. The democrats aren’t going to take the freebies away, they would then not have all the freebie votes so the ilks of Barrack HUSSEIN OBama can be elected to increase socialism.
Jeff Day EA
Evansville, IN
Actually, the credits wouldn’t “pay” the national sales tax. The sales tax simply would mean that the “credits” wouldn’t go as far as they do now because the price of everything would go up by the amount of the tax — so a given $ “income” would buy less.
Also, given the choice, I’d rather have an administration that is falsely accused of increasing “socialism” than one that considers the Bill of Rights to be just so much toilet paper.