Posted on 08/05/2011 12:15:58 PM PDT by cotton1706
Absolutely. And the way to do it is to repeal the 16th Amendment and force the Government to live on the income it was designed for. That's excise taxes and nothing more.
but now the unelected supercongress could bring it back.
do you even have to be a sitting elected congressmember to be on the supercongress?
they gave obama membership on the supercongress...
I could live with that, no problem. However, living on excise taxes alone brings with it another set of problems in determining what products/services are to be taxed.
At the state level government looks to increasing taxes on alcohol and tobacco to cover budget shortfalls, but there is a limit to what people are going to tolerate and those type taxes become unreliable. Just look at the expense many states have gone through seeking customer lists from online tobacco sellers in an effort to collect the excise taxes not paid by residents. Oh, and the majority of those retailers are no longer in business.
People will just stop using the products or find other ways around paying the taxes. There is a huge black market in cigarettes. I see evidence of it every day because I live just 8 miles from the MD/VA line. Out of state plates far out number VA plates at any place that sells cigarettes and other tobacco products, and not just during tourist season (like now) it’s all year round.
But gutting back to the feds - repealing the 16th amendment is going to be one tough nut to crack, but getting the federal government out of things it doesn’t belong in would be the fist step. In February of 09 Obummer increased the federal cigarette tax from 39cents to $1 and on loose tobacco from $1.08 to $25 a pound to pay for ScHIP, so smokers are paying for health insurance for the kids of the same people who demonize smokers as second class citizens.
No, they won’t. They will be lucky to get a quarter of what they collect.
Yes; it was...until it started to be used for bike path boondoggles;
"high speed transit" scams;
"greenway initiatives";
"wildlife over/underpasses";
"Scenic Byway" route designations;
and my favorite, "President Obama Paid For This Unstarted Shovel Ready Stimulus Project With Your Gas Tax Dollars" signs....
BTTT
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