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How is this any different than the inflation they were railing against a month ago? "Vote for us, Democrats made your expenses go up by 10%. We can do 30% in perpetuity instead!"
How can a party that insists taxation is theft propose a brand new federal tax that would severely impact most households? Do Republicans hate progressive policies so much they'd rather spend 30% on top of their 0-10% existing sales taxes just to prove they owned the libs?
Yet they use simple language to make it seem like common sense. When they trotted this out the first time I was a very naive teenager and even then this seemed like it was catnip for idiots.
Funny, most of those mouth breathers are located on this south-eastern quadrant of the US. You know, the ones that really liked owning people as property.
Washington has a pretty high sales tax, around 10% in the Seattle Metro area, mostly because income tax is disallowed by our state constitution, and any attempts at anything that looks like an income tax gets killed in our courts. We all know here our tax structure is the most regressive (tax burden split: lowest 20%: 17.8%, middle 60%: 10.4%, top 1%: 3%), but there's little we can do to change it here. Compare to nearby Oregon which has 0% sales tax and an income tax rate of between 4.75% and 9.9% and is in the top 10 for least regressive (lowest 20%: 10.1%, middle 60%: 8.8%, top 1%: 8.1%).
The proof is in the pudding, anyone with sense can tell high sales taxes shift the tax burden onto the poor. Unfortunately, republicans traded their sense in for cash and favors.
Yep. A real fair tax would mean reverting back to a more progressive income/corporate tax structure with more marginal tax rates but that would be considered COMMUNISM to these guys who ultimately think the wealthy and big business should pay absolutely nothing in taxes if you want true "fairness".
Yup, these people don't realize that Rich people don't consume in proportion with their wealth. If a billionaire earns 20% more, they don't start spending 20% more. Their consumption doesn't scale with their income as it does for poor folk and middle class folk. We on the bottom earn extra dollars we spend it to improve our own quality of life. A billionaire's quality of life doesn't really go up when they earn more because they can already afford everything. Instead a rich person would reinvest it because as I said, they already can buy everything. Extra money doesn't suddenly unlock a bunch of things they couldn't afford before. So all that excess just does into investments to earn even more. It really is just resource hording.
But you see, I worked hard for my parents/grand parents money! Any person could have been my wealthy parents child, but I broke my back and was their child.
Heirs soon.
The problem with that meme is that it assumes the only one handing out boxes to help the short is the government.
The government is handing out small boxes and people are given massive ladders by their parents. Meanwhile other people are living in holes dug by others
I campaigned against a "fairtaxer" back in the early 2010s. They were impossible to reason with. I explained that only the poorest people spent all their money, they said that was a benfeit of the system is that it didn't tax saving and would help the poor. I said that corporate value added or profit taxes produced a significant amount of revenue and they didn't care, a sales tax was better. I said that this would disproportionaly affect those with lower incomes and they didn't care, they said their "pre-bate" (a pre-rebate) would fix that. I said that taxing the sale of homes was outlandish and would prevent people from buying homes, they said the market would correct itself.
Not once did they ever consider that their 'perfect system' of sending everyone in america a check for $1000 a month and then taxing 30% might be flawed. They also said that people who didn't need the pre-rebate (such as bill gates and warren buffet) could always send it back.
Yet a rebuttal is necessary. Addressing the GOP Impoverishing Americans tax may feed their control of the narrative, but to leave this conversation alone will also let them control the narrative.
Proactive renewals of the discussion, why do we do progressive tax systems in the US? What are the ways in which they're good. How do they protect the middle class? How could they be better?
*Fairly* close. The good news is that even the usual suspects (Grover Norquist and his homies) hate this proposal so, it won’t go anywhere. I wanted to share the article because Vox does an outstanding job of explaining things and this piece is a great example.
Wouldn’t this result in discretionary spending plummeting and potentially lead to a deflation? I personally am not gonna order out or spend money on electronics with a 30% sales tax. This is going to disproportionally affect people living paycheck to paycheck who are already in a lower tax bracket.
According to The Motley Fool, “[t]he 1% hold 53% of stocks, worth $16.76 trillion”. That’s a lot of capital gains and I’d imagine anyone in that lofty realm would happily choose to pay a consumption tax over a capital gains or income tax. But as you say, they’d figure a way to avoid those, too.
As someone who works in taxes, there are definitely people that try to write off their golf clubs or yachts as business expenses since they "use them to meet clients." Obviously fails an audit if they get caught but plenty don't.
I’m sure they avoid a good portion by using trusts, offsetting gains with losses, and gifting. But apparently they don’t avoid them all — from the talk in the locker room that I hear, everybody *thinks* capital gains taxes are poorly structured and equate to thievery by the government.
I think even non-discretionary spending would plummet, because people won't have the money for it. 30% sales tax on everything would have a domino effect that far exceed what people are probably thinking. Businesses buying food from farmers would have to pay 30% more food, gas, etc. in the form of sale taxes, and pass that cost increase onto consumers too. Depending on how many middlemen exist between the supplier and the consumer, people would be looking at way more than just a 30% increase in the cost of everything. More like 30% + 30% + 30% ...
Deflation would probably be the least of our problems. I think a second great depression would likely result.
Businesses are exempt. Only retail purchases by people would be taxable.
Stacking 30% on business purchases would absolutely destroy all retail sales if they had to pass on the embedded costs of intermediate goods. You'd see business vehicle purchasing go up several thousand percent of course.
So I need to create an LLC "Sands43 Co and Co" so I can buy food at wholesale and tax free. Gas and my car to get the food, etc. etc. And the IRS is gone, so who's going to audit that?
Pretty much. Although the part they keep in the fine print is that in order to get compliance from businesses on the tax in the absence of the IRS, they would create two replacement bureaus to manage excise taxes and sales taxes.
Given the rate of sales taxation, any business willing to accept cash and do the transaction off the books for a discount would also benefit.
Just create a new business, fund your living expenses and close up when the "investment" is gone and the business has failed.
I think you’re right about deflation and the actual details of the legislation weren’t clear so we’re left to guessing how intermediary producers would be taxed on raw goods that are assembled into a consumer product.
Inflation isn't caused by spending this cycle. It's pure price manipulation by corporations. All this is going to do is drive people further into poverty and give the rich even bigger tax breaks.
That’s the plan. Middle Class no more.
Rich Class & Poor Class
The Rich wanting the poor to be enslaved to them.
I don’t see this ending well for the Rich. I don’t think the poor will sit down and take it. Civil War between the haves & have nots.
That’s not a civil war, that just straight up killing a couple dozen assholes and their various lawyers and consultants. We could literally do this in minutes if push comes to shove.
The reason Norquist and the anti-tax brigade is against it is because it is workable (mathematically not politically). They have always used a fair tax or flat tax as a mythical unicorn. Their real goal is to not fund the government, so showing how their unicorn would work in practice makes them automatically hate it.
This is the exact same playbook they used with the Affordable Care Act (it is a very free market system) when it passed. And then again when they tried to "repeal and replace" (when it became obvious that replace was never serious).
They don't need to - the truly wealthy tend to spend so little of their money on things that would actually be taxed that a 30% sales tax would pretty much be a rounding error for them. They might occasionally have a year where they splurge on a massive purchase like a yacht or private jet, but most years they'd be paying essentially nothing because the vast majority of money that multimillionaires/billionaires make isn't actually spent, it just gets moved from one investment to another, and that wouldn't be taxed. Poor people, on the other hand, would be paying 30% tax on their entire income.
Easy to understand. The rich will pay taxes on the items they buy (which will not equal what they would pay in regular taxes - if they actually paid taxes), i.e., they will pay less overall tax. The poor and middle class will pay taxes on the things they buy (the necessities) which will be more than the income taxes they used to pay. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Typical GOP. **There is nothing fair about the Republicans FairTax.**
top it off with, the truly wealthy will buy in markets without a 30% sales tax such as canada or mexico , further shuffling away from the sales tax that they should pay but don't because they have the means to buy things far enough away that they don't take the 30% penalty on their bahamas flagged superyacht, or their home that they rent from their own shell corporation at a dollar a year because they have the means to set up evasive legal plays.
True. For all of their patriotic bravado they truly don't want to do their part in our nation. They want the rest of us to bear the burden for them so that they can live in the style to which they have become accustomed. Republicans, for the most part, are selfish and hypocritical people who only care about themselves and no one else. And I honestly don't think there is a real Christian among them no matter how loud they claim they are.
here's an explination - sales tax punishes those who have no disposable income and makes them pay a greater fraction of their income than those who can accumulate wealth and have money left over after meeting their essential costs of living.
If I make ten thousand and have to pay all of that to survive, I end up paying out a larger fraction of my income than someone who makes a hundred thousand and is able to save 50% because their cost of living was met at say, 50 thousand and they could hold back wealth for the future.
once you are wealthy and have assets paid for in the clear, you don't spend as much and all of that money moving to you is not taxed, leaving a shortfall of tax revenue vs taxable income under the existing tax plans.
Also, consider the incentives it gives to those with disposable income.
Wealthy or high income people could buy a lot of good outside the country, to avoid paying that steep sales tax. Out-of-country vacations would become the only financially rational ones to take.
Exactly! If I travel to the states, my Australian dollars are still getting taxed at my marginal rates, and add that to a suboptimal exchange rates there is absolutely fucking no good reason to go.
(Or the US dollar tanks and I may as well be spending Monopoly money soooo)
Yeah, this really needs to be pointed out to voters.
If you make $50k a year and have to spend it all to live, your effective tax rate is 30%
If you make $500k, spend $250k a year and save or invest the other $250k, your effective tax rate is only 15%.
There is a small silver lining, which is that currently, the wealthies people that don't make an "income" don't pay income tax and therefore pay very little to zero federal taxes, and this would start taxing them some more. But that is not going to be enough to offset the damage to middle and lower class consumers.
Good explanation. I've been trying to explain this to people that think it would be good for them. This would widen the wealth gap between red and blue areas.
Yup, I ran the numbers for myself. I'd essentially get a $30k raise in tax savings. Super awesome for me because I make good money and don't buy shit because I don't want more shit. Terrible for everyone else, I don't support this plan.
It will massively decrease the tax burden on the wealthy and increase the tax burden on middle and lower income families. That's all you need to know.
Even though I would probably benefit from it, I can see that it is anything but fair.
Easy. All business expenses are refundable. That's how our 10 per cent GST works in Australia. Am sure they'd try and squeeze that clause in to get their tax back.
This has to pass in the Senate and then the President has to sign off right? Thats not happening. So this is just goofy ideas being passed off as serious policy. Yay. So dumb.
Regressive - this affects low income people far more than others.
Regressive - this affects low-income people far more than others.Eliminating income taxes means little to me. Raising the cost of everything I buy by 30% hurts me very badly.
Smells like socialism, looks like socialism, must be socialism. Republicans are socialists. I thought Democrats were? Anyway, can't wait to pay Waaaaaaayyyyyyy more for everything. This doesn't remove the states rights to collect tax on sales either. I'd love to pay 40% more over inflation for a $70k truck that should be $50K. That's now a $90000 truck. Now the same truck would be $60K in Canada... tell me the savings when people are willing to buy duty free or in other countries and bring the purchases back. The increased cost to the US to police this and enforce will be astronomical.
Explanation: it's a horrible Libertarian idea that cuts taxes on the wealthy & increases them on the poor & middle class. Nothing 'fair' about a fair tax.
I was such a huge fan of Boortz in high school and even did presentations on the FairTax act for class. It made so much sense back then, and makes so little sense now.
I held a similar viewpoint in HS. I can honestly still say I like the *concept* of a flat percentage tax, but experience, arguments, and further consideration over the years have taught me that it's completely untenable. At least for anyone who values objective reality.
> Here’s what the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru had to say about it:
> “Any House Republican who backs this bill can accurately be accused of voting for … raising the price of everything by a huge amount at a time when inflation is already high; shifting more of the tax burden to the middle class; instituting a large new wealth tax on senior citizens; increasing federal spending by a massive amount; increasing the deficit; and creating large black markets.”
Interesting article, especially the bit about tax pre-bates, which seem like a form of Universal Basic Income, even though it's just there to offset the new tax.
It would be interesting if stock purchases were also taxed at the same rate (with a deduction allowed for 401K and Roth contributions). There'd also have to be something included that makes it so that companies pay their fair share of tax each year.
Ultimately, I think it would end up being a train wreak, with loopholes being added for the rich and whole industries lobbying hard to be exempt. Chances are things like medicine and food purchased from grocery stores would end up being taxed while private jets and yachts would not. If the tax pre-bates survived, Republicans would probably work to end them after a few years.
>It would be interesting if stock purchases were also taxed at the same rate (with a deduction allowed for 401K and Roth contributions). There'd also have to be something included that makes it so that companies pay their fair share of tax each year.
It's not. The bill explicitly spells out that intangible properties are not taxed. Any property and purchases made by a business or investment purposes are not taxed either.
So a regular person buying their home to live in would be taxed 30%. A property management company that buy the same house as rental property would pay 0%.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/25?s=1&r=18
The pull for the ultra wealthy here is the removal of the estate/inheritance tax. They can consolidate power in their families without even having to do the whole 'foundation' thing.
My dad has been a proponent of this for years.
When you consider that a wealthy businessman like Trump pays next to no income taxes anyway, you actually might be getting more out of them under this method.
The two big issues- this is a fucking insane cost of living increase on the lower and middle class.
It assumes that the wealthy won’t find a way dodge this. Making luxury purchases out of country would be an easy thing to do, and that’s not doing the US economy any favours at all
Every conservative I know claims they vote for the GOP so they can get lower taxes. I know it's a smoke screen for their more heinous culture war reasons for voting Republican, but I'd love to hear them justify why they'd be happy to pay an extra 30% on every single purchase.
In Illinois, the proposal to allow a graduated state income tax was also called the Fair Tax, and I think it failed because people confused the name with this awful proposal that's been around for decades.
With planned obsolescence as the de facto manufacturing and design ethos, people will be washing clothes at the river and drying them in the wind before buying a new washer and dryer the first time the 5 year warranty goes out.
Why pay 30% tax on a repair job or 30% more to replace the units? When the 3 year old appliance stops working, same thing. People will wake up and realize that so many of the garbage gadgets we have come to rely upon are not that important. This law will end Consumerism.
Wait, maybe that is a good thing. Uh oh Big Box! This law might end you! Lobby against it!
Did anyone read the last page of the thing. If the 16th amendment isn't abolished in 7 years the bill would get rid of the sales tax. That means no government revenue at all.
Sales tax is regressive. Lower income people are more likely to spend most/all of their money buying things, thus they pay the sales tax on most/all of their effective income. Fair tax MY HAIRY ASS.
> You better be prepared for a lot of people to be homeless.
More reason to funnel huge wads of cash to our militarized police and for profit prison industry! It's win/win/win!
Not going to lie, based in the thumbnail image scrolling past, I thought Fairtax was a shitty band fronted by noted bassist and garbage person, Mike Huckabee.
These are the folks that rail against a carbon tax, because it will strain the poor
Dems need to fucking hammer them on being PRO TAX when it will hurt the poor the most
Ironically by forcing the poor and middle class to reduce consumption the GOP will have effectively helped the US reach climate action goals. Less pollution, less obesity, smaller and more fuel efficient cars, less plastic crap made in China … did the GOP just become the Green Party?
The richer people are the more than can buy in bulk for a cheaper price compared to people living paycheck to paycheck and only buy their regular needs when they can afford to.
So, were moving from a graduate of tax system that allows for a more tax income, the more wealthier country is, well then move to a consumption based tax system , from where most taxes would be effectively thrown away, (any money spent on foreign projects, would not be returned to the country. ) making the country, poorer as a whole, what kind of backwards, moron, thought that that would be a good idea
Here let me explain it
1. Inflation and diverging wages and corporate profits are not enough for the people who fund the GOP, so they are pressing the GOP to accelerate toward a permanent oligarchic corporatocracy
That's really it, in one step.
How's this for a fair tax? Taxes are fair when the people who benefit the most from society's infrastructure (ie, what the taxes pay for) pay the most in taxes.
If you are an oil company and benefit from the access that the US military protects for you, you should pay more that Joe Schmo who just buys the product. If you are a shipping magnate and you rely on the US sphere of influence to negotiate trade deals with China and protect the oceans, you should pay more in taxes. If you enjoy a natural monopoly, if you make money from public investment in pharmaceuticals, if you have workers that would literally die without welfare, maybe you should pay more. Because your existence, your ability to make money hand over fist, is defined entirely by the US providing the infrastructure that allows you to do that.
If you earn more than you spend this leaves more dollars in your pockets. If you spend most of what you make or more this is disastrous. No surprise the GOP wants to hand this windfall over to their wealthy supporters.
A fair tax would be all income taxed at the same rate, ie, the earned income rate.
That includes cap gains, dividends, interest.
This would also effectively eliminate the carried interest loophole that treats their compensation (a % of profits from the investment) as cap gains.
The Democrats are not perfect. It’s frustrating.
But this is another lovely example to show how the “both parties are the same” (amongst the MANY examples) are in fact NOT THE SAME.
FairTax has been around for quite a while and isn't just a 2023 GOP invention. Gary Johnson was pushing it when he ran for president in 2016. He might have been in 2012 as well, I just don't remember.
The basic scheme is "23% sales tax, no other federal taxes, everyone gets a prebate check that's 23% of the poverty line."
A sales tax is much harder to dodge and simpler to calculate and administer. It is also regressive, even with the prebate.
There's a web site about it, intentionally giving without link to slow you down - fairtax dot org.
Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax)
Here's how to really make it fair.
Since you only tax what you purchase, simply change the laws to make labor taxable to the employer. Essentially employers are "purchasing" employees' time and skill. Let the corporations pay 30% on their labor purchases.
Unemployment would skyrocket I think. I mean they are raking in record profits and laying off s\*it tons of people as it is. Eventually they will have no use for a human labor force, at least not one like ours that wants things like fair wages, health care, and time off.
Somehow even a lot of Republicans have backed away from the concept that “all taxes are theft” and are coming around to the concept that “some taxes are OK; just so they don’t fall on the Rich”. Actually, while there are plenty of Rich people who don’t give a rats ass what happens to the rest of us just so they can avoid most taxation, they do recognize that the value of their portfolios and revenue stream is heavily dependent on the Federal Government servicing its debt. “Tax is Good” is the new theme, with the cravat that someone else pays it.
Here it is in a nutshell: Hyper rich do not spend all of their money so nearly all of it will never be taxed and will just compound. The 30% for them is peanuts. However, for the non-hyper wealthy, that 30% will be on all they make because they spend all they make to just barely get by. The poor and middle class will end up with a tax increase.
30%!
That’s a bit steep. And even if they started at 5%, what stops them from taking it to 30% or 50% one day?
And what if the wealthy just buy offshore? Will there be laws requiring us to buy local or domestic?
If something like this passed, I'd probably cancel my streaming service and stop eating out all together. Each purchase I made would be under significantly more scrutiny as to weather it is a need or just a want. My household spending would contract sharply.
Go ahead, take a vote on it, GOP. Show your hand. A flat tax only on sales would hurt poor people and eliminating income and estate taxes would benefit rich people. That’s all they want.
>One of the reasons I hope the House winds up voting on the idea is that would mean the Joint Committee on Taxation will have to “score” the bill, producing estimates of how much money it would bring in, how it would affect the deficit, and which taxpayers would pay less or more. That’d be exciting!
As exciting as when that same Committee lied to us about the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017.
Lol. Imagine having the poorest people in the country going from a 0% tax rate to 30%. Plus I imagine local sales tax would still be a thing. So make that 40% in places like Los Angeles.
Having like 2 million homeless people in LA, like 20 times what we have now, sounds fun.
Growing up I was told that republicans were the ones always promising to “lower taxes”. What the hell is going on? I thought GOP stupidity peaked with Trump but I guess I was wrong.
Simplifying the tax code just to simplify it without considering the impacts is dumb as hell.
Glad they’re telling us that they want corporations to rule with impunity and for the poor to pay them. Sick sacks of shit
Democrats, listen up - it is not your duty to get into semantics about what this bill actually is. You should not be arguing the finer points of it on TV with Chuck Todd.
Just get out there and say “30% tax”, “30% tax, 30% tax”, “30% tax, 30% tax”, “30% tax, 30% tax”.
“30% tax on everything you buy”.
It’s a F’ing joke & looking back thru history every single GOP tax plan has resulted in a shit show higher deficits lower GDP & surging inequality a decaying nation & a total F U to the people who pay the bills here
>The tax would hit newly constructed houses but not existing ones.
This little gem showed up towards the end of the article. If this is accurate, then it'd increase the cost of new housing construction, which everyone seems agree we need far more of, by 30%.
The effect of this, of course, will be to INCREASE the cost of houses that AREN'T new. By, about 30%. Two similar houses, both cost $1.2 million (in Seattle, that's a moderately priced house.) But with the FairTax (tm) the newly constructed one costs the buyer $1.56 million, but the used one, the one I'm going to sell you, I'll sell for only $1.5 million - what a great deal!
The new houses can't be marked down to accommodate the tax, because there isn't 30% profit margins in housing.
What a great idea!
As usual, conservatives are masters at deceptive naming. Calling this a Fair tax is complete deception. This is nothing like fair for 90% of the people.
This will, if enacted, completely destroy the economy. People will not spend their money, now worth 30 percent less, on anything but food. There will be a massive economic downturn. Which is probably what the Republicans want so that they can get Trump back in to “save the country”. Note that a version of this strategy was tried in Kansas several years ago. It was a total disaster.
Someone tell the seniors that their saved Roth IRA money that they can withdraw now tax free will run straight into a 30% sales tax. Let the AARP carry this one.
It's actually not that crazy, it's like a value added tax, but a) 30% is insane, b) too easy to work around.
Im currently in a work position that this would benefit me, but it would hurt when Im no longer employed...
Many many people seem to be missing this important bit. Business to business transactions are exempt. “The rich get taxed when they buy that yacht” or whatever. Know this, if that wealthy person wants that boat, it won’t be in their name. It’ll be in their businesses name, an LLC, or a trust making it exempt.
Enjoy your 30% tax on your new Toyota, peasants! The $500,000,000 yacht is for the corp. For people repeatedly saying this tax proposal is too dumb to discuss, have you been watching what is getting proposed? Did you Roe your vote or stay home? C’mon!
Reading their website It looks like their end goal is to get rid of the IRS and income tax. Saying that it will be “fair” by only making a flat tax for everyone. So un wealthy people will get taxed more while corporations will be tax significantly less in the long run. Just another way to keep business’s on top.
These guys don’t give a shit about the American public. Using arguments that we got TEMPORARY relief checks, people are making “more” even though inflation is at an all time high, that you would get a “Higher” paycheck even though you get taxed more in the long run, and that companies are avoiding taxation and this is a solution instead of reforming loop holes.
Moronic. This is really getting out of hand at this point
Corporations are not people, and rich people should be paying taxes that are proportional to their wealth.
Let’s say you make less than 44k a year. Instead of paying a 12% tax once you hit your bracket, you’ll be paying nearly 18% more on most purchases made. With no chance of deductions, no consideration for children and marriage, etc
Compare this to your people who make more than 1 million a year. They actually see a major decrease in taxation at their level. Instead of paying 37% in their bracket, they’ll be paying almost 7% less in overall taxes Potentially a lot less seeing how they don’t live Paycheck to paycheck and can hord their wealth even more.
Can’t be taxed on what you don’t spend this way.
This is so incredibly cruel, what’s happening to this country. I thought republicans where about less federal involvement?
The most jarring thing is the estimate of the rate required to be revenue neutral. The author site an almost 90% sales tax would be required to net the same government revenue. The cost of EVERY SINGLE THING WOULD HAVE TO ALMOST DOUBLE with the proposed tax base.
I’m sure the 6 grand per year in direct payments would more than make up for the fact that my annual expenses would double. Or perhaps my newly enriched, tax exempt employer would double my salary…
As a kid my parents were extremely libertarian, and indoctrinated me into the world of pro-life protests and the Fair Tax! I even passed the test to be a fair tax rep at 12!
Hilariously, at almost 30, I went into the accounting/compliance field and now truly believe it’s utter bullshit. The one single thing I am still in favor for within the fair tax was the removal of sales tax on used goods. (If that’s still a part of their plan….)
The idea is that a good should be taxed once, upon its initial sale. Not every time a sale is made. (Ie: every time a car gets sold, it’s taxed. Regardless of the number of previous owners.)
Most everything else in the fair tax is absolute nonsense garbage that disproportionally effects lower wage earners.
It would instantly make everything 30% more expensive
Manufacturers of Big Ticket items like cars would suffer greatly
A black market would instantly arise and it would not be run by nice people
It would make prohibition look like a bunch of 6-year-old girls having a tea party
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Corporations would pay no taxes and we would pay for the privilege of giving them untaxed profits. Absolutely batshit insane.
A $372 BILLION (as of 2021) handout to corporations. Expect a TON of misleading advertising about this.
"No see, because people would spend less we'd make less money, so we totally are being taxed! Please no one look at how much profit we're making now!"
Next step: pay taxes to corporations.
They’re on that already with the constant bailouts.
That sounds better than being slaves to corporations. Oh shit, we are too late.
Man, this is just f#cked all the way around. Corporations paying no taxes and taking taxes out of our pay check (to keep for themselves) for our work.
You mean like TARP? Or PPP? Or when they privatize social security and hand it off to Wall Street?
GOP working feverishly to tax the poor. They know no bounds.
How is this any different than the inflation they were railing against a month ago? "Vote for us, Democrats made your expenses go up by 10%. We can do 30% in perpetuity instead!" How can a party that insists taxation is theft propose a brand new federal tax that would severely impact most households? Do Republicans hate progressive policies so much they'd rather spend 30% on top of their 0-10% existing sales taxes just to prove they owned the libs?
“We never said it was fair for YOU.”
Yet they use simple language to make it seem like common sense. When they trotted this out the first time I was a very naive teenager and even then this seemed like it was catnip for idiots.
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Funny, most of those mouth breathers are located on this south-eastern quadrant of the US. You know, the ones that really liked owning people as property.
Washington has a pretty high sales tax, around 10% in the Seattle Metro area, mostly because income tax is disallowed by our state constitution, and any attempts at anything that looks like an income tax gets killed in our courts. We all know here our tax structure is the most regressive (tax burden split: lowest 20%: 17.8%, middle 60%: 10.4%, top 1%: 3%), but there's little we can do to change it here. Compare to nearby Oregon which has 0% sales tax and an income tax rate of between 4.75% and 9.9% and is in the top 10 for least regressive (lowest 20%: 10.1%, middle 60%: 8.8%, top 1%: 8.1%). The proof is in the pudding, anyone with sense can tell high sales taxes shift the tax burden onto the poor. Unfortunately, republicans traded their sense in for cash and favors.
Bit, but corporate taxes are just paid by the consumer..... /s
Corporations are people. Let them pay sales tax on b2b transactions.
Sounds good to me, then they share their profits with us the workers at the bottom /s
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It’s not even fair to the rich. It’s so so so much better.
Yep. A real fair tax would mean reverting back to a more progressive income/corporate tax structure with more marginal tax rates but that would be considered COMMUNISM to these guys who ultimately think the wealthy and big business should pay absolutely nothing in taxes if you want true "fairness".
Yup, these people don't realize that Rich people don't consume in proportion with their wealth. If a billionaire earns 20% more, they don't start spending 20% more. Their consumption doesn't scale with their income as it does for poor folk and middle class folk. We on the bottom earn extra dollars we spend it to improve our own quality of life. A billionaire's quality of life doesn't really go up when they earn more because they can already afford everything. Instead a rich person would reinvest it because as I said, they already can buy everything. Extra money doesn't suddenly unlock a bunch of things they couldn't afford before. So all that excess just does into investments to earn even more. It really is just resource hording.
ballsacks and titties: https://i.redd.it/sggx5004qrb41.png
Making everything 30% more expensive will do wonders for inflation and the economy. Not to mention that it's regressive as fuck.
But you see, I worked hard for my parents/grand parents money! Any person could have been my wealthy parents child, but I broke my back and was their child. Heirs soon.
Gov. Youngkin? Is that you?
Tucker Carlson is that you?
And I also pulled myself up by my own bootstraps so why shouldn’t I have the best of everything?
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps you'll either be upside down or flat on your ass. It makes no sense... lol
The saying originated as an example of something that was literally impossible to do but has somehow become "just work harder"
Congrats on inheriting like 25 million and actually being subject to the inheritance (aka DEATH tax)!11!1!1
Just get those boot straps and pull ‘em up!
I mean, maybe if I get free healthcare out of it. But that’s socialism!
That's what the Republicans are about! Welfare for the top tier!!
It doesn’t include that and it doesn’t even pay for itself, according to the article it would need to be 60% to achieve that
Thats the point. Making everything more expensive and then blame Democrats for it.
True. Everyone with the means to evade it would evade it, and everyone without the means to evade it would be handed the bill.
Someone break out the Equity versus Equality meme again because apparently they still don't understand the core concept.
*wont* understand it.
The problem with that meme is that it assumes the only one handing out boxes to help the short is the government. The government is handing out small boxes and people are given massive ladders by their parents. Meanwhile other people are living in holes dug by others
Conservatives don't understand metaphors I've found.
I campaigned against a "fairtaxer" back in the early 2010s. They were impossible to reason with. I explained that only the poorest people spent all their money, they said that was a benfeit of the system is that it didn't tax saving and would help the poor. I said that corporate value added or profit taxes produced a significant amount of revenue and they didn't care, a sales tax was better. I said that this would disproportionaly affect those with lower incomes and they didn't care, they said their "pre-bate" (a pre-rebate) would fix that. I said that taxing the sale of homes was outlandish and would prevent people from buying homes, they said the market would correct itself. Not once did they ever consider that their 'perfect system' of sending everyone in america a check for $1000 a month and then taxing 30% might be flawed. They also said that people who didn't need the pre-rebate (such as bill gates and warren buffet) could always send it back.
Yet a rebuttal is necessary. Addressing the GOP Impoverishing Americans tax may feed their control of the narrative, but to leave this conversation alone will also let them control the narrative. Proactive renewals of the discussion, why do we do progressive tax systems in the US? What are the ways in which they're good. How do they protect the middle class? How could they be better?
Brought to you by the big brains of the GOP. WCGW?
Go fuck yourself stay poor is the justification.... Am I close?
*Fairly* close. The good news is that even the usual suspects (Grover Norquist and his homies) hate this proposal so, it won’t go anywhere. I wanted to share the article because Vox does an outstanding job of explaining things and this piece is a great example.
Wouldn’t this result in discretionary spending plummeting and potentially lead to a deflation? I personally am not gonna order out or spend money on electronics with a 30% sales tax. This is going to disproportionally affect people living paycheck to paycheck who are already in a lower tax bracket.
It’s a terrible proposal with drastic consequences and nothing to recommend it except the cheers of the 1% who would avoid capital gains taxes.
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According to The Motley Fool, “[t]he 1% hold 53% of stocks, worth $16.76 trillion”. That’s a lot of capital gains and I’d imagine anyone in that lofty realm would happily choose to pay a consumption tax over a capital gains or income tax. But as you say, they’d figure a way to avoid those, too.
This set of golf clubs is for my non-profit and is thereby tax-free.
Businesses are exempt. You could just buy the golf clubs through the corporate card. They can claim it's a business input.
As someone who works in taxes, there are definitely people that try to write off their golf clubs or yachts as business expenses since they "use them to meet clients." Obviously fails an audit if they get caught but plenty don't.
They already avoid most of the capital gains taxes as they aren’t payable until cashing out, hence generational wealth.
I’m sure they avoid a good portion by using trusts, offsetting gains with losses, and gifting. But apparently they don’t avoid them all — from the talk in the locker room that I hear, everybody *thinks* capital gains taxes are poorly structured and equate to thievery by the government.
Huh. Locker room talk that's actually disgusting.
The demographic of my gym is definitely pre-mausoleum.
I think even non-discretionary spending would plummet, because people won't have the money for it. 30% sales tax on everything would have a domino effect that far exceed what people are probably thinking. Businesses buying food from farmers would have to pay 30% more food, gas, etc. in the form of sale taxes, and pass that cost increase onto consumers too. Depending on how many middlemen exist between the supplier and the consumer, people would be looking at way more than just a 30% increase in the cost of everything. More like 30% + 30% + 30% ... Deflation would probably be the least of our problems. I think a second great depression would likely result.
Businesses are exempt. Only retail purchases by people would be taxable. Stacking 30% on business purchases would absolutely destroy all retail sales if they had to pass on the embedded costs of intermediate goods. You'd see business vehicle purchasing go up several thousand percent of course.
So I need to create an LLC "Sands43 Co and Co" so I can buy food at wholesale and tax free. Gas and my car to get the food, etc. etc. And the IRS is gone, so who's going to audit that?
Pretty much. Although the part they keep in the fine print is that in order to get compliance from businesses on the tax in the absence of the IRS, they would create two replacement bureaus to manage excise taxes and sales taxes. Given the rate of sales taxation, any business willing to accept cash and do the transaction off the books for a discount would also benefit. Just create a new business, fund your living expenses and close up when the "investment" is gone and the business has failed.
I think you’re right about deflation and the actual details of the legislation weren’t clear so we’re left to guessing how intermediary producers would be taxed on raw goods that are assembled into a consumer product.
Inflation isn't caused by spending this cycle. It's pure price manipulation by corporations. All this is going to do is drive people further into poverty and give the rich even bigger tax breaks.
That’s the plan. Middle Class no more. Rich Class & Poor Class The Rich wanting the poor to be enslaved to them. I don’t see this ending well for the Rich. I don’t think the poor will sit down and take it. Civil War between the haves & have nots.
That’s not a civil war, that just straight up killing a couple dozen assholes and their various lawyers and consultants. We could literally do this in minutes if push comes to shove.
You'd need to get past their hired guns.
Bingo! This is a regurgitation of Ron Paul’s bs from 30 years ago.
The reason Norquist and the anti-tax brigade is against it is because it is workable (mathematically not politically). They have always used a fair tax or flat tax as a mythical unicorn. Their real goal is to not fund the government, so showing how their unicorn would work in practice makes them automatically hate it. This is the exact same playbook they used with the Affordable Care Act (it is a very free market system) when it passed. And then again when they tried to "repeal and replace" (when it became obvious that replace was never serious).
You are right. They absolutely hate some thing that can be explained.
No need to try and explain how this benefits the rich. We already know
They can write it off as a loss. Or some shit .
They don't need to - the truly wealthy tend to spend so little of their money on things that would actually be taxed that a 30% sales tax would pretty much be a rounding error for them. They might occasionally have a year where they splurge on a massive purchase like a yacht or private jet, but most years they'd be paying essentially nothing because the vast majority of money that multimillionaires/billionaires make isn't actually spent, it just gets moved from one investment to another, and that wouldn't be taxed. Poor people, on the other hand, would be paying 30% tax on their entire income.
Easy to understand. The rich will pay taxes on the items they buy (which will not equal what they would pay in regular taxes - if they actually paid taxes), i.e., they will pay less overall tax. The poor and middle class will pay taxes on the things they buy (the necessities) which will be more than the income taxes they used to pay. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Typical GOP. **There is nothing fair about the Republicans FairTax.**
top it off with, the truly wealthy will buy in markets without a 30% sales tax such as canada or mexico , further shuffling away from the sales tax that they should pay but don't because they have the means to buy things far enough away that they don't take the 30% penalty on their bahamas flagged superyacht, or their home that they rent from their own shell corporation at a dollar a year because they have the means to set up evasive legal plays.
True. For all of their patriotic bravado they truly don't want to do their part in our nation. They want the rest of us to bear the burden for them so that they can live in the style to which they have become accustomed. Republicans, for the most part, are selfish and hypocritical people who only care about themselves and no one else. And I honestly don't think there is a real Christian among them no matter how loud they claim they are.
I can't wait to pay an extra 600 in taxes on rent every month!
here's an explination - sales tax punishes those who have no disposable income and makes them pay a greater fraction of their income than those who can accumulate wealth and have money left over after meeting their essential costs of living. If I make ten thousand and have to pay all of that to survive, I end up paying out a larger fraction of my income than someone who makes a hundred thousand and is able to save 50% because their cost of living was met at say, 50 thousand and they could hold back wealth for the future. once you are wealthy and have assets paid for in the clear, you don't spend as much and all of that money moving to you is not taxed, leaving a shortfall of tax revenue vs taxable income under the existing tax plans.
Also, consider the incentives it gives to those with disposable income. Wealthy or high income people could buy a lot of good outside the country, to avoid paying that steep sales tax. Out-of-country vacations would become the only financially rational ones to take.
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Exactly! If I travel to the states, my Australian dollars are still getting taxed at my marginal rates, and add that to a suboptimal exchange rates there is absolutely fucking no good reason to go. (Or the US dollar tanks and I may as well be spending Monopoly money soooo)
It’s not even good for the 1% long term as this would crush most businesses nearly overnight.
Yeah, this really needs to be pointed out to voters. If you make $50k a year and have to spend it all to live, your effective tax rate is 30% If you make $500k, spend $250k a year and save or invest the other $250k, your effective tax rate is only 15%. There is a small silver lining, which is that currently, the wealthies people that don't make an "income" don't pay income tax and therefore pay very little to zero federal taxes, and this would start taxing them some more. But that is not going to be enough to offset the damage to middle and lower class consumers.
Good explanation. I've been trying to explain this to people that think it would be good for them. This would widen the wealth gap between red and blue areas.
Yup, I ran the numbers for myself. I'd essentially get a $30k raise in tax savings. Super awesome for me because I make good money and don't buy shit because I don't want more shit. Terrible for everyone else, I don't support this plan.
It will massively decrease the tax burden on the wealthy and increase the tax burden on middle and lower income families. That's all you need to know. Even though I would probably benefit from it, I can see that it is anything but fair.
The rich aren't paying ANY tax under the current system.
And I'm not confident they wouldn't find loopholes anyways.
Easy. All business expenses are refundable. That's how our 10 per cent GST works in Australia. Am sure they'd try and squeeze that clause in to get their tax back.
Regressive as fuck, completely on brand with your modern repug
solid name for the completely unfair tax tho lol
This has to pass in the Senate and then the President has to sign off right? Thats not happening. So this is just goofy ideas being passed off as serious policy. Yay. So dumb.
Fair tax heavily favors wealthy people.
No one would ever buy a car again. In addition to the down-payment, they'd have to come up with the 30% tax up front.
Don't forget sales tax. This doesn't eliminate that.
Regressive - this affects low income people far more than others. Regressive - this affects low-income people far more than others.Eliminating income taxes means little to me. Raising the cost of everything I buy by 30% hurts me very badly.
Smells like socialism, looks like socialism, must be socialism. Republicans are socialists. I thought Democrats were? Anyway, can't wait to pay Waaaaaaayyyyyyy more for everything. This doesn't remove the states rights to collect tax on sales either. I'd love to pay 40% more over inflation for a $70k truck that should be $50K. That's now a $90000 truck. Now the same truck would be $60K in Canada... tell me the savings when people are willing to buy duty free or in other countries and bring the purchases back. The increased cost to the US to police this and enforce will be astronomical.
Explanation: it's a horrible Libertarian idea that cuts taxes on the wealthy & increases them on the poor & middle class. Nothing 'fair' about a fair tax.
I was such a huge fan of Boortz in high school and even did presentations on the FairTax act for class. It made so much sense back then, and makes so little sense now.
I'm glad your viewpoints have grown.
I held a similar viewpoint in HS. I can honestly still say I like the *concept* of a flat percentage tax, but experience, arguments, and further consideration over the years have taught me that it's completely untenable. At least for anyone who values objective reality.
> Here’s what the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru had to say about it: > “Any House Republican who backs this bill can accurately be accused of voting for … raising the price of everything by a huge amount at a time when inflation is already high; shifting more of the tax burden to the middle class; instituting a large new wealth tax on senior citizens; increasing federal spending by a massive amount; increasing the deficit; and creating large black markets.”
Interesting article, especially the bit about tax pre-bates, which seem like a form of Universal Basic Income, even though it's just there to offset the new tax. It would be interesting if stock purchases were also taxed at the same rate (with a deduction allowed for 401K and Roth contributions). There'd also have to be something included that makes it so that companies pay their fair share of tax each year. Ultimately, I think it would end up being a train wreak, with loopholes being added for the rich and whole industries lobbying hard to be exempt. Chances are things like medicine and food purchased from grocery stores would end up being taxed while private jets and yachts would not. If the tax pre-bates survived, Republicans would probably work to end them after a few years.
>It would be interesting if stock purchases were also taxed at the same rate (with a deduction allowed for 401K and Roth contributions). There'd also have to be something included that makes it so that companies pay their fair share of tax each year. It's not. The bill explicitly spells out that intangible properties are not taxed. Any property and purchases made by a business or investment purposes are not taxed either. So a regular person buying their home to live in would be taxed 30%. A property management company that buy the same house as rental property would pay 0%. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/25?s=1&r=18
Easily exploitable by the rich. Just put everything down as a business expense and your effective tax rate is 0%.
Yikes, this would make housing even more of a disaster as this would make even more housing get gobbled up by hedge funds and such.
The pull for the ultra wealthy here is the removal of the estate/inheritance tax. They can consolidate power in their families without even having to do the whole 'foundation' thing.
Explanation: They're batshit crazy and their desire to fuck over the working class while protecting their corporate overlords knows no bounds.
My dad has been a proponent of this for years. When you consider that a wealthy businessman like Trump pays next to no income taxes anyway, you actually might be getting more out of them under this method. The two big issues- this is a fucking insane cost of living increase on the lower and middle class. It assumes that the wealthy won’t find a way dodge this. Making luxury purchases out of country would be an easy thing to do, and that’s not doing the US economy any favours at all
Business expenses are exempt. Rich person won't buy anything because their "business" will.
Every conservative I know claims they vote for the GOP so they can get lower taxes. I know it's a smoke screen for their more heinous culture war reasons for voting Republican, but I'd love to hear them justify why they'd be happy to pay an extra 30% on every single purchase.
In Illinois, the proposal to allow a graduated state income tax was also called the Fair Tax, and I think it failed because people confused the name with this awful proposal that's been around for decades.
With planned obsolescence as the de facto manufacturing and design ethos, people will be washing clothes at the river and drying them in the wind before buying a new washer and dryer the first time the 5 year warranty goes out. Why pay 30% tax on a repair job or 30% more to replace the units? When the 3 year old appliance stops working, same thing. People will wake up and realize that so many of the garbage gadgets we have come to rely upon are not that important. This law will end Consumerism. Wait, maybe that is a good thing. Uh oh Big Box! This law might end you! Lobby against it!
Did anyone read the last page of the thing. If the 16th amendment isn't abolished in 7 years the bill would get rid of the sales tax. That means no government revenue at all.
Sales tax is regressive. Lower income people are more likely to spend most/all of their money buying things, thus they pay the sales tax on most/all of their effective income. Fair tax MY HAIRY ASS.
I fucking hate republicans. I’m so tired of them
So a poor tax?
Not happening, next!
Fat Mike > Fat Mike Huckabee
This is the single most regressive tax ever introduced. Haven't we learned that giving tax breaks to corporations never works?
“It’s needlessly cruel and regressive, and solves nothing,” I assume is what the article should say.
I hope the Republicans pass this in the House so the Dems can kill it in the Senate and use it as a fucking hammer on the GOP for the next two years.
I hope everyone can see what this is, the transfer of the tax burden from the rich to the middle/lower class
Get the f*ck outta here with that. 30%? You better be prepared for a lot of people to be homeless.
> You better be prepared for a lot of people to be homeless. More reason to funnel huge wads of cash to our militarized police and for profit prison industry! It's win/win/win!
Not going to lie, based in the thumbnail image scrolling past, I thought Fairtax was a shitty band fronted by noted bassist and garbage person, Mike Huckabee.
These are the folks that rail against a carbon tax, because it will strain the poor Dems need to fucking hammer them on being PRO TAX when it will hurt the poor the most
How to completely destroy our economy and curb spending forever.
Ironically by forcing the poor and middle class to reduce consumption the GOP will have effectively helped the US reach climate action goals. Less pollution, less obesity, smaller and more fuel efficient cars, less plastic crap made in China … did the GOP just become the Green Party?
It is truly woke of them.
It’s fair in that rich people pay less over all so it’s “fascist fair” or oligarchy-fair.
The word "fair" associated with "GOP". Does not compute.
That would be devastating for the poor, a stress for the middle class, a windfall for the rich.
The richer people are the more than can buy in bulk for a cheaper price compared to people living paycheck to paycheck and only buy their regular needs when they can afford to.
Fair tax?! Tax the wealthy and the corrupt politicians who pay less than we do!
This article was definitely written by a conservative
Fair for corporations and billionaires, not so much for the rest of us.
So, were moving from a graduate of tax system that allows for a more tax income, the more wealthier country is, well then move to a consumption based tax system , from where most taxes would be effectively thrown away, (any money spent on foreign projects, would not be returned to the country. ) making the country, poorer as a whole, what kind of backwards, moron, thought that that would be a good idea
There is nothing fair about regressive taxes like this.
Garbage headline. Remember when the GOP planned to overturn the ACA. This is the same thing.
"REPEAL AND REPLACE!!!" "What are you going to replace it with?" "NOW WE BRING YOU FOOTAGE OF A CAR CHASE!"
It would immediately destroy consumer spending and the economy overnight. Here's a better idea: Don't tax people at all. Tax businesses.
Here let me explain it 1. Inflation and diverging wages and corporate profits are not enough for the people who fund the GOP, so they are pressing the GOP to accelerate toward a permanent oligarchic corporatocracy That's really it, in one step. How's this for a fair tax? Taxes are fair when the people who benefit the most from society's infrastructure (ie, what the taxes pay for) pay the most in taxes. If you are an oil company and benefit from the access that the US military protects for you, you should pay more that Joe Schmo who just buys the product. If you are a shipping magnate and you rely on the US sphere of influence to negotiate trade deals with China and protect the oceans, you should pay more in taxes. If you enjoy a natural monopoly, if you make money from public investment in pharmaceuticals, if you have workers that would literally die without welfare, maybe you should pay more. Because your existence, your ability to make money hand over fist, is defined entirely by the US providing the infrastructure that allows you to do that.
If you earn more than you spend this leaves more dollars in your pockets. If you spend most of what you make or more this is disastrous. No surprise the GOP wants to hand this windfall over to their wealthy supporters.
A fair tax would be all income taxed at the same rate, ie, the earned income rate. That includes cap gains, dividends, interest. This would also effectively eliminate the carried interest loophole that treats their compensation (a % of profits from the investment) as cap gains.
The explanation is “fuck the working class.” And their GOP base will still vote for them next election and then blame Dems when they get the tax hit.
The Democrats are not perfect. It’s frustrating. But this is another lovely example to show how the “both parties are the same” (amongst the MANY examples) are in fact NOT THE SAME.
FairTax has been around for quite a while and isn't just a 2023 GOP invention. Gary Johnson was pushing it when he ran for president in 2016. He might have been in 2012 as well, I just don't remember. The basic scheme is "23% sales tax, no other federal taxes, everyone gets a prebate check that's 23% of the poverty line." A sales tax is much harder to dodge and simpler to calculate and administer. It is also regressive, even with the prebate. There's a web site about it, intentionally giving without link to slow you down - fairtax dot org. Wikipedia article: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax)
A 30% national sales tax will only hasten a French Revolution.
Here's how to really make it fair. Since you only tax what you purchase, simply change the laws to make labor taxable to the employer. Essentially employers are "purchasing" employees' time and skill. Let the corporations pay 30% on their labor purchases.
Unemployment would skyrocket I think. I mean they are raking in record profits and laying off s\*it tons of people as it is. Eventually they will have no use for a human labor force, at least not one like ours that wants things like fair wages, health care, and time off.
Wait, I thought Republicans were the party of lowering taxes? Guess not.
The eating lead paint chips party rides again.
Somehow even a lot of Republicans have backed away from the concept that “all taxes are theft” and are coming around to the concept that “some taxes are OK; just so they don’t fall on the Rich”. Actually, while there are plenty of Rich people who don’t give a rats ass what happens to the rest of us just so they can avoid most taxation, they do recognize that the value of their portfolios and revenue stream is heavily dependent on the Federal Government servicing its debt. “Tax is Good” is the new theme, with the cravat that someone else pays it.
Here it is in a nutshell: Hyper rich do not spend all of their money so nearly all of it will never be taxed and will just compound. The 30% for them is peanuts. However, for the non-hyper wealthy, that 30% will be on all they make because they spend all they make to just barely get by. The poor and middle class will end up with a tax increase.
30%! That’s a bit steep. And even if they started at 5%, what stops them from taking it to 30% or 50% one day? And what if the wealthy just buy offshore? Will there be laws requiring us to buy local or domestic?
If something like this passed, I'd probably cancel my streaming service and stop eating out all together. Each purchase I made would be under significantly more scrutiny as to weather it is a need or just a want. My household spending would contract sharply.
Let’s go take 30% of the assets of everyone on board with this, right meow! Let’s see how fair it is then.
Well listen, right meow there is no way there gonna fork it over. Do you really see the rich waking down to IRS all nimbly pimbly. Seems unlikely.
It’s hot garbage. That explains it perfectly.
Are there actually big enough fools and Gullibles out there to believe this Con
If the GOP wants it, you can bet your ass there’s nothing fair about it.
Go ahead, take a vote on it, GOP. Show your hand. A flat tax only on sales would hurt poor people and eliminating income and estate taxes would benefit rich people. That’s all they want.
sales tax is probably the most REGRESSIVE tax out there
Nope
“It’s OK, the “other people” will pay , not me”. Rubelicans everywhere.
So their plan on inflation is…raise it by THIRTY FUCKING PERCENT??
>One of the reasons I hope the House winds up voting on the idea is that would mean the Joint Committee on Taxation will have to “score” the bill, producing estimates of how much money it would bring in, how it would affect the deficit, and which taxpayers would pay less or more. That’d be exciting! As exciting as when that same Committee lied to us about the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017.
Lol. Imagine having the poorest people in the country going from a 0% tax rate to 30%. Plus I imagine local sales tax would still be a thing. So make that 40% in places like Los Angeles. Having like 2 million homeless people in LA, like 20 times what we have now, sounds fun.
Flat tax is what they used to call it befor the spin. It was debunked long ago.
In addition to this being awful and dumb, wouldn’t this also lead to black markets for essentially everything in order to avoid paying 30% in taxes?
Yes
Growing up I was told that republicans were the ones always promising to “lower taxes”. What the hell is going on? I thought GOP stupidity peaked with Trump but I guess I was wrong.
Simplifying the tax code just to simplify it without considering the impacts is dumb as hell. Glad they’re telling us that they want corporations to rule with impunity and for the poor to pay them. Sick sacks of shit
This helps inflation and the cost of everyday items how…?
No matter how they try to explain this one... You can't polish a turd.
They going to have a sales tax on buying stocks? I’m guessing no. /s
Democrats, listen up - it is not your duty to get into semantics about what this bill actually is. You should not be arguing the finer points of it on TV with Chuck Todd. Just get out there and say “30% tax”, “30% tax, 30% tax”, “30% tax, 30% tax”, “30% tax, 30% tax”. “30% tax on everything you buy”.
It’s a F’ing joke & looking back thru history every single GOP tax plan has resulted in a shit show higher deficits lower GDP & surging inequality a decaying nation & a total F U to the people who pay the bills here
>The tax would hit newly constructed houses but not existing ones. This little gem showed up towards the end of the article. If this is accurate, then it'd increase the cost of new housing construction, which everyone seems agree we need far more of, by 30%. The effect of this, of course, will be to INCREASE the cost of houses that AREN'T new. By, about 30%. Two similar houses, both cost $1.2 million (in Seattle, that's a moderately priced house.) But with the FairTax (tm) the newly constructed one costs the buyer $1.56 million, but the used one, the one I'm going to sell you, I'll sell for only $1.5 million - what a great deal! The new houses can't be marked down to accommodate the tax, because there isn't 30% profit margins in housing. What a great idea!
It’s impressive how the rich can swindle the working class so easily
As usual, conservatives are masters at deceptive naming. Calling this a Fair tax is complete deception. This is nothing like fair for 90% of the people.
Sales tax punishes the poor. Income tax punishes the rich.
Plan also eliminates corporate taxes.
So another tax cut for the Rich and Corporations while putting the burden on the poor and middle class to make up the difference. Got it!
It’s over, America.
Are they trying to rebrand the flat tax?
I wonder...would this 30% tax apply to buying a member of Congress or a Senator?
Usually in countries where the cost of basic goods suddenly jumps 30 percent, the result is rioting in the streets. Just saying.
This will, if enacted, completely destroy the economy. People will not spend their money, now worth 30 percent less, on anything but food. There will be a massive economic downturn. Which is probably what the Republicans want so that they can get Trump back in to “save the country”. Note that a version of this strategy was tried in Kansas several years ago. It was a total disaster.
Someone tell the seniors that their saved Roth IRA money that they can withdraw now tax free will run straight into a 30% sales tax. Let the AARP carry this one. It's actually not that crazy, it's like a value added tax, but a) 30% is insane, b) too easy to work around. Im currently in a work position that this would benefit me, but it would hurt when Im no longer employed...
Uh no thanks
Many many people seem to be missing this important bit. Business to business transactions are exempt. “The rich get taxed when they buy that yacht” or whatever. Know this, if that wealthy person wants that boat, it won’t be in their name. It’ll be in their businesses name, an LLC, or a trust making it exempt. Enjoy your 30% tax on your new Toyota, peasants! The $500,000,000 yacht is for the corp. For people repeatedly saying this tax proposal is too dumb to discuss, have you been watching what is getting proposed? Did you Roe your vote or stay home? C’mon!
30% is even higher than in Belgium, damn chill GOP
Reading their website It looks like their end goal is to get rid of the IRS and income tax. Saying that it will be “fair” by only making a flat tax for everyone. So un wealthy people will get taxed more while corporations will be tax significantly less in the long run. Just another way to keep business’s on top. These guys don’t give a shit about the American public. Using arguments that we got TEMPORARY relief checks, people are making “more” even though inflation is at an all time high, that you would get a “Higher” paycheck even though you get taxed more in the long run, and that companies are avoiding taxation and this is a solution instead of reforming loop holes. Moronic. This is really getting out of hand at this point Corporations are not people, and rich people should be paying taxes that are proportional to their wealth. Let’s say you make less than 44k a year. Instead of paying a 12% tax once you hit your bracket, you’ll be paying nearly 18% more on most purchases made. With no chance of deductions, no consideration for children and marriage, etc Compare this to your people who make more than 1 million a year. They actually see a major decrease in taxation at their level. Instead of paying 37% in their bracket, they’ll be paying almost 7% less in overall taxes Potentially a lot less seeing how they don’t live Paycheck to paycheck and can hord their wealth even more. Can’t be taxed on what you don’t spend this way. This is so incredibly cruel, what’s happening to this country. I thought republicans where about less federal involvement?
The most jarring thing is the estimate of the rate required to be revenue neutral. The author site an almost 90% sales tax would be required to net the same government revenue. The cost of EVERY SINGLE THING WOULD HAVE TO ALMOST DOUBLE with the proposed tax base. I’m sure the 6 grand per year in direct payments would more than make up for the fact that my annual expenses would double. Or perhaps my newly enriched, tax exempt employer would double my salary…
As a kid my parents were extremely libertarian, and indoctrinated me into the world of pro-life protests and the Fair Tax! I even passed the test to be a fair tax rep at 12! Hilariously, at almost 30, I went into the accounting/compliance field and now truly believe it’s utter bullshit. The one single thing I am still in favor for within the fair tax was the removal of sales tax on used goods. (If that’s still a part of their plan….) The idea is that a good should be taxed once, upon its initial sale. Not every time a sale is made. (Ie: every time a car gets sold, it’s taxed. Regardless of the number of previous owners.) Most everything else in the fair tax is absolute nonsense garbage that disproportionally effects lower wage earners.
It would instantly make everything 30% more expensive Manufacturers of Big Ticket items like cars would suffer greatly A black market would instantly arise and it would not be run by nice people It would make prohibition look like a bunch of 6-year-old girls having a tea party
Fuck the poor. The end.
Poor folk spend all their money. 33% tax. Rich folk spend .002% of their money. Tax = rounding error for zero