Unless they can skirt it, how will this be great for the well-off? I buy a $1M boat and I've got to pay another $250K in tax on it?
who needs a 1m boat? think of a guy like warren buffet. he used to brag that he still lived in a house thaat he bought for 60k many years ago. he also used to brag that he drove a 20 year old car. he makes billions but he does not consume. he would skirt it by lifestyle.
except for the fact he had a house in laguna beach and probably others as well. He probably kept his family home for tax reasons. Buffett is a marketing image. He owns 20 percent of moodys... which allowed wall street to loot the pensions funds of the people he pretends to care about.
Most of the 20 countries went to a VAT because of massive fraud and to prevent cascading which is taxes on taxes. Dick Armey, who IMO, has a better approach, ie a flat tax, wrote this a while back. It is a nice summary of why a very high national sales tax won't work: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/7659 Let's look briefly at new vs existing homes. HR25 will tax the new home but not existing homes. For example, say you pay a contractor to build a $300K house; Uncle Sam will want $90K in taxes. So, now you have a house that you paid $390K for but it only appraises at $300K. Will a bank loan you the money for the taxes? Appraisal rules do not allow an appraiser to add in the taxes. Also, will a bank take on that risk? Say you have 20% or $60K for a down payment. That means the bank will have to loan you $330K or $30K ABOVE market value. Here is a link to a paper that examines business startup costs in Australia when a NST was imposed there. Bottom line, small biz owners spent about $7600 to comply with the requirements. http://www.taxinstitute.com.au/index.cfm?objectid=4F2F0B26-D565-5B5B-E18E468653B6FEDD It has many other problems some real and some imagined, of course. Now it's time to ice down some cool ones and get ready for football. Seneca
Thanks for taking the time. I've been an ardent proponent of an overhauled/simplified tax structure ever since I filled out my first 1040 form around 1980. Even with software like Turbo tax, I muse every April about how I'd love to be locked in a room with the assholes who dreamed up our tax code. So I could bash their fucking skulls with a baseball bat. And I don't even like baseball.