Wonder where Speaker Hastert stands on the FairTax? Wonder no more.

E-mail | January 6th, 2005 | Americans For Fair Taxation

[Badray]

To: Your Nightmare

So we are suppose to support an POS idea just because it's different?

No, you should support it because it restores freedom. 588 posted on 01/08/2005 10:19:32 PM EST by EternalVigilance

I think that you just nailed it, although inadvertantly. There are a lot of people who are afraid of freedom.

[EternalVigilance]

There are a lot of people who are afraid of freedom.

Yes, there are.

[groanup]

Low earners tend to die early, often not making it to retirement age, and thus losing all of the dollars they have paid into Social Security.

I have heard this put another way by Neal Boortz. He contends that black males get the worst deal from SS because they have the shortest life expectancy of any group in America.

[Remember_Salamis]

"I believe I said, or should have said......NEGATIVE INCOME TAX burden. I beg your pardon if I mis-typed/spoke.....but my contention is that our INCOME tax system is redistributive in the extreme. I've personally prepared tax returns for individuals who've come away with an effective INCOME tax rate of NEGATIVE 22.XX Percent. That's unconscionable."

-- Was thata before or after the 15.3% payroll tax???

[ancient_geezer]

Is Joe's consumption greater than your consumption?

Joe's problem, not mine to solve for him. Joe is free move or change his situation to aquire the same benefit of dollar value that I have by giving something else up.

In the end analysis Joe is paying more for those specific items, he is undoubtedly commensurately advantaged sufficiently to remain with the particular situation he has, or he would be taking extrodinary measures to place himself in a more advantageous one.

[ancient_geezer]

Do the homeowner's property taxes constitute consumption?

No.

Does he pay FairTax on his prop taxes?

No, he pays on the basis of the total payment of rent.

Do the prop taxes borne by the renter for his housing consumption constitute consumption?

Already answered. What Joe pays for is the service the landlord charges for in paying those property taxes if that landlord chooses to recover property taxes in the rent he charges you.

If the rent is too high for your liking, find another landlord willing to take less.

What if the prop taxes are broken out separately in the rental agreement and the renter is required to remit the prop taxes directly to the local tax office? Does the renter pay FairTax on these property taxes?

No, so go do that where ever state law allows or at least does not prohibit you from paying tax for the principal owner of real estate.

In fact, in principal, you could even charge the landlord for doing that service for him and collect the NRST from the landlord in providing that service as a business, LOL. In which case whatever you charged the landlord for that service would be subject to the NRST.

Taxes paid to government by you or anyone else are neither property nor service performed and state government is not required to collect NRST on those payments. If state law does not prohibit a third party from paying taxes due for the principal who has legal incidence of the tax, then obviously you may pay those taxes to the state or county for him directly and not have an NRST collected on that remittance by you.

[Conservative Goddess]

The NEGATIVE 22.xx percentage was for INCOME tax alone.

To get a better understanding of where the burden of taxation falls, the CBO prepares "Tax Burden Tables." They attempt to quantify/include the impact of all taxes paid by individuals. Even under that scenario, the lowest quintile only pays 5.5% in tax.

Please see http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5746&sequence=1&from=0 where you will find the following:

"Effective tax rates for individual households may differ substantially from the group average, particularly given the fact that the adjustment for the size of households results in various kinds of households with substantially different unadjusted incomes falling in the same income category. As a result, effective tax rates represent the situation not for particular taxpayers but that for groups of taxpayers with similar amounts of adjusted household income.

CBO estimated the effective rates for four federal taxes--individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, and excise taxes--under current law for each year from 2001 through 2014. The estimates for 2001 match CBO's historical values.(7)

The analysis assigns taxes to households on the basis of who bears the burden of the taxes. In particular, it assumes the following:

Households bear the burden of all taxes that they pay directly, specifically, individual income taxes and the employee's share of payroll taxes.


Households pay excise taxes according to their consumption of taxed goods, such as tobacco and alcohol. In the case of excise taxes on intermediate goods, such as components of consumer goods, households bear the taxes in proportion to their overall consumption.


The burden of taxes levied on businesses actually falls on households. In line with most economists, CBO assumes that the employer's share of payroll taxes falls on employees and thus assigns those payments to employees both as income and taxes paid. The analysis assumes that corporate income taxes fall on the owners of capital and allocates those liabilities--again, both as income and as taxes--to households in proportion to their income from interest, dividends, rents, and capital gains.(8)
Because of uncertainty about the incidence of other taxes and some data limitations, the analysis excludes estate and gift taxes, tariffs, and other miscellaneous sources of revenue. It also excludes some of the lesser provisions of EGTRRA, such as those providing education incentives and tax benefits for retirement saving, because data are not available to estimate their effects among the various income quintiles."


Whereas we need to make some attempt to quantify the tax burden....these tables are fundamentally flawed. Please see: A Comparison of Tax Distribution Tables at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/cda04-13.cfm

and: Tax Incidence, Tax Burden and Tax Shifting: Who actually pays the tax? at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/cda04-12.cfm

[groanup]

Yes, and the lower life expectancy of black males is a HUGE factor in the lower net worth and wealth accumulation of blacks in this country. Those last ten or twenty years after you reach retirement age are a goldmine for building wealth (can you say "compounding?"). Miss out on those years and your family misses out on a lot of wealth.

I take it you're being sarcastic while being ignorant. The point is that when you die, your SS checks stop. Black males die younger than any other group in the country. So while their working years are the same their retirement years are shorter. They are paying for me, a white male, in my retirement while not getting the same benefit.

[adb102]

Quest10 wrotes;
Like Steve Forbes said, one should be able to pay their taxes using an index card and nothing more.

If I'm not mistaken Forbes has switched to support of the sales tax.

[Badray]

<< If I'm not mistaken Forbes has switched to support of the sales tax. >>

I believe that you are mistaken. The last time that Steve and I talked, he is still concerned that the congresscritters will be too tempted to have both an income and a consumption tax unless and until the 16th is dead and buried.

But I pointed out to him that the only thng stopping them from doing it now is about 10,000 pitchforks and a few .22 caliber pea shooters. This is nothing in the law to prevent it from happening now.