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Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

Still, Orszag has hired a prominent VAT advocate to advise him on health care: Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and author of the 2008 book "Health Care, Guaranteed." Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, chairman of a task force Obama assigned to study the tax system, has expressed at least tentative support for a VAT.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052602909.html
 

Mike

Well-known member
Would this be on top of "Income Tax"? Or a replacement of?

I'll go for a National Sales Tax alone. If you don't buy anything, you don't pay any taxes.................. :wink:
 

Steve

Well-known member
Mike said:
Would this be on top of "Income Tax"? Or a replacement of?

I'll go for a National Sales Tax alone. If you don't buy anything, you don't pay any taxes.................. :wink:

if you believe the news,.. it is to pay for health care,..
 

Mike

Well-known member
Steve said:
Mike said:
Would this be on top of "Income Tax"? Or a replacement of?

I'll go for a National Sales Tax alone. If you don't buy anything, you don't pay any taxes.................. :wink:

if you believe the news,.. it is to pay for health care,..

I won't pay a Federal sales tax on top of Income Tax. No way.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform, balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent.

A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation's debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor.
 

Steve

Well-known member
hypocritexposer said:
And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform, balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent.

A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation's debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor.

by the sound of it we would get a "depression" to..
 

Steve

Well-known member
Mike said:
Steve said:
Mike said:
Would this be on top of "Income Tax"? Or a replacement of?

I'll go for a National Sales Tax alone. If you don't buy anything, you don't pay any taxes.................. :wink:

if you believe the news,.. it is to pay for health care,..

I won't pay a Federal sales tax on top of Income Tax. No way.

have you ever known a tax that was "eliminated" just because they created a new tax?
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Newsweek_WhytheyHateUs.jpg
 

Cowpuncher

Well-known member
The VAT was sold in Europe in most cases as a replacement for income taxes. Now they have both and so will we if they have their way.
 
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