Sales taxes catastrophically drop consumer spending & trigger recessions.
It will eradicate conservatives in elections for over a decade. It's a tax grab.
It taxes services, the one bright spot in the US trade balance & makes it less globally competitive .
Implementation increases costs (software, paperwork).
It's *always* regressive no matter how the tax credits/rebates are finagled.
The main purpose of a VAT (Value Added Tax) is to allow the 1% to evade taxation.
@Npars01 @stopgopfox@libretooth.gr You know what else drops consumer spending and increases costs? Not having money in the first place, compliance with income taxes.
Taxes in any form have the effect you're talking about. There's no way around that. So long as government is needing to be funded it will take a bite out of private sector activity.
The FairTax has advantages over income taxes, and that's what it should be compared against. Not no taxes at all, because that's not an optional on the table.
The wealthiest people paid the GOP to defund the IRS. Over a trillion dollars of income taxes goes uncollected per year.
A federal sales tax would require a massive government hiring program to administer the new taxes. Or it becomes yet another method of tax noncompliance by the rich.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/09/us/politics/house-republicans-irs-funding.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/12/irs-problems-house-republicans-defund/
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/04/09/how-big-is-the-problem-of-tax-evasion/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/business/irs-tax-gap.html
@volkris @stopgopfox
The tax grab proposed by the GOP is *not* better than an income tax.
The wealthiest simply don't want to pay taxes at all and devise ways to orchestrate things so they don't have to pay.
If the wealthiest 1% hadn't gotten the Trump tax cuts, there wouldn't be a massive hole in revenue
The wealthiest aren't taxed on their income. Why is $1000 in income from dividends treated differently than $1000 from paid employment?
The government can be funded by taxing the rich