Look Before You Leap on Cain’s 9-9-9 Tax Plan

CATO ^

[Steve Van Doorn]

Many people make the false assumption that a 9% income tax and new 9% national sales tax will make their effective tax rate 18%. But, this is far from the truth when you dive into the numbers, remove the taxes that 999 will remove, and then simplify the tax code. This becomes clear when you test your own numbers in the calculator.

999 Calculator
http://raisingcain2012.wordpress.com/about/

[itsahoot]

You mean to you personally? Otherwise you could just pay attention.

Besides it will never pass, it won’t work, the people hate it, Perry is better. It will just make people vote for Obama, and Mitt will have to save us.

Who cares, you will have a choice between a t¥rd sandwich on rye, or sourdough, and like it.

If you really care about our country you will abandon the establishment republicans, for they have long ago sould their soul, they drove up the debt when they had control of both houses and the presidency. What did they fix?

[tiger63]

Lawyers are the problem to everything in life! They produce nothing, steal from one side and give to the other side after keeping much of the money involved.

Look at the number of Lawyers who stink up the Senate and the House in Washington!

[fightinJAG]

Crosslinking to the thread dedicated to this subject:

Architect of Cain's 9-9-9 plan says he should drop the sales tax

[fightinJAG]

Cain supports a Balanced Budget Amendment and Cut, Cap and Balance.

[loucon]

He's right about the plan not allowing employers to deduct employee compensation (this was not at first clear to me from the bullet points on Cain's web site).

Point to a Cain source that says that employee payroll will not be allowed to be deducted as business expense for the corporation, otherwise it's pure BS and you are a stirrer of it!

[fightinJAG]

CATO and Peter Schiff (Herman Cain's Hidden 9) are in an echo chamber on this one. And they both make some fundamental mistakes in their assumptions on how 999 operates.

It's worth reviewing the Schiff thread along with this one.

[Jim Robinson]

“Cain has yet to explain SS and Medicare and Obamacare under his plan.”

I’m aboard the Cain train yet, but I have one foot on the platform.

You might learn about some of his conservative principles:

http://www.hermancain.com/the-issues

Repeal and Replace Health Care “Deform”

President Obama and the liberals in Congress have dismantled the free market health care system and replaced it with health care “deform.” They have passed measures that compromise the sacred patient-doctor relationship, eliminate patient choice, stick a bureaucrat in the examining room, ration care and do nothing to limit frivolous lawsuits that drive up the cost of health care. In all of these provisions, they made health care more expensive and less accessible for American families they claimed to protect.

Under the guise of making health care a “right” for all people, President Obama and the liberals in Congress instead extended the tentacles of government, expanding their control and diminishing patients’ rights. They have also made it more difficult and more expensive for doctors to practice medicine, including specialized practitioners who are desperately needed to save lives. In reality, their attempts at reforming the system have actually deformed it.

The majority of Americans agree: it’s time to repeal and replace Obamacare with patient-centered, free market reforms. It’s time to institute legitimate tort reforms that let doctors practice medicine without fear of frivolous lawsuits. Loser pay laws would be a great start! That is, require those who lose frivolous lawsuits to pay the legal expenses of those found not guilty. Additionally, loosening the restrictions on Health Savings Accounts would help to empower Americans to save and invest their own money to expand their options for health care.

Let’s level the playing field under the current tax code and allow the deductibility of health insurance premiums regardless of whether they are purchased by the employer or the employee. That would help shift ownership of one’s health care back to where it belongs, the individual. Patient-centered free market health care reforms have already been developed and introduced in Congress, but they are stuck in committee and they can’t get out. With the right leadership we can get them out and get them passed.

Modernize Social Programs

Big government enthusiasts designed social programs to provide a financial safety net, but, in turn, dependency on the government for the most vulnerable in society became an expected entitlement. Decades since their inception, far too many Americans have shifted their expectations from government assistance to entitlement. Too many people have exchanged their freedom for a false sense of security that these programs are supposed to provide.

Unfortunately, this has not only been to the sociological detriment of America, but also to its economic detriment. Simply, ever-expanding social programs are compromising the current and future financial stability of this great country. According to a May 2009 article in Newsweek, current projections indicate that Medicare will go bankrupt by 2017 and Social Security will bottom out by 2037. These figures are advanced from 2008’s estimates, which forecasted Medicare’s bankruptcy to occur in 2019 and 2041 for Social Security. The situation will continue to worsen if we do not do something differently.

For the generations or workers who have paid into Social Security and Medicare, the federal government’s inevitable failure to pay them as they retire is undeniably stealing. These are generations who have worked and sacrificed to leave this country a better place for their children and grand children as they retire. The current behavior of an out of control federal government does little to ease their minds.

The federal government has imposed expensive and often counter-productive social and welfare programs on the states and the people. It is time to admit the mistakes, and get the federal government out of the way. This will allow states, cities, churches, charities and businesses to offer a helping hand instead of a handout where they live. People closest to the problems are the best ones to solve the problems effectively.

We can fulfill our responsibility to our golden age citizens and future retirees by empowering them instead of restricting them.

[fightinJAG]

Also, CATO doesn’t seem to understand the plan in its simple form.

Never mind if it were presented a full-fledged legislation.

[Meet the New Boss]

Point to a Cain source that says that employee payroll will not be allowed to be deducted as business expense for the corporation, otherwise it's pure BS and you are a stirrer of it!

Cain himself acknowledges this:

Claim 5: The business tax represents a new tax on labor. Response: Paul Krugman of the New York Times makes this claim because we do not allow businesses to deduct the cost of labor from their taxable revenue. But the claim is bogus for several reasons. First, we are reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 9 percent, so the tradeoff is a much lower rate paid on more of a company’s income. Second, we treat capital and labor the same, both with the corporate tax and with the income tax. That is fair and neutral. What’s more, the current system taxes both capital investment by business and capital gains by individuals. That’s a double tax, and the 9-9-9 plan eliminates it.

BTW, I am in favor of the 9-9-9 plan because it will dramatically change incentives in favor of job creation and savings and broadens the base to ensure that more Americans have skin in the game.

[Jim Robinson]

er, I’m NOT aboard the Cain train yet, but I have one foot on the platform.

[katiedidit1]

I am not gung ho on Cain’s 999 plan. Cut spending, cut taxes, no aid to illegals..period, get out of the UN, get rid of the EPA, less regulations on business (some are needed) anyone on unemployment should go back to school for training OR do community service work and that goes for welfare recipients too, repeal Obamacare, drill for oil (jobs) utilize coal and liquified coal should be looked into a lot more and cut foreign aid. That is what I want in a candidate. One thing that troubles me about Cain is he had the backing of RAINBOW PUSH COALITION and Beasley when he ran for senate in Georgia and the church sends up red flags

[newzjunkey]

It is *NOT* a VAT. Having _a_ supposedly defining feature of a VAT does not make it a VAT.

This is something Cain explained in an op-ed yesterday.

9-9-9 has no VAT. There's a retail sales tax on new item purchases only that consumers pay.

American business-to-business sales are deductible from the business income flat tax as are capital investments like machinery purchases.

Anyone claiming there's a VAT are scaremongers.

As anyone can see there's no supply-chain consumption tax in 9-9-9 and that's what a VAT is.

[normy]

Yes but Herman Cain is a preacher and his church pastor advocates government involvement in equalizing society, very similar to Obama's guy without the hate, but the principle is Un American and goes against every thing our founders stood for. There I said it.

“It’s not enough to talk about what black folks ought to do,” Alexander once said. “We have to also look at what government is not doing to ensure fairness and equal opportunity. God is on the side of the least of these. Jesus said ‘the first shall become the last and the last shall become the first.’”

[bilhosty]

I am not a Romney bot I really don’t like any of them. I just think we have a tendency to put up to many exotic candidates who won’t win. I just don’t see Cain and Perry as winners in the fall. Cain is under qualified from not holding officce and Perry is too Texan we need some one who will keep this from becoming a third world country so limousine libs can take over. Right now I have to say reluctantly Romney is the only one who can win.

[Okieshooter]

If the cost of labor is not allowed to be deducted it will make it impossible for a labor intensive business to start up as they may be operating at a loss for at least a year or two and will still be required to pay 9% on their gross. Even when they start to make a profit the 9% could possibly amount to much more than the current 35%. It all depends on what % labor is of their total costs.

[normy]

I believe in empowerment zones. Most of the unemployed black Americans in this country are in these mostly economically depressed areas. It could be, and I’m only using this as an example, because we haven’t finished establishing the parameters yet. Instead of in a designated empowerment zone, it being 9-9-9, it could be, as an example only, 3-3-3.

What this does, because you have a lot of African-Americans located in cities like Detroit, disproportionately, it would encourage businesses to stay in business there or to move there. It would encourage people to work there, because if you live in the empowerment zone, you’re going to pay a smaller percentage in taxes.”

I am on record here before I started hearing this stuff as having Cain as my backup. Since I have moved to Newt. Cain says the right things but I don't really believe them.

[normy]

Yeah I caught that. That is a poor poor excuse. Win or lose on your core beliefs.

[Meet the New Boss]

Factor in the fact that the combined 15.3% payroll tax goes away. This tax is assessed on the labor cost regardless of whether a business is operating at a loss.

But in an overall sense there is no question that the new tax would change incentives in favor of reinvigorating a manufacturing economy as opposed to the service economy we have been developing into.

[1010RD]

More specifically: All taxes are paid by individuals.

It is either in the form of direct taxation or indirect payments of the costs of taxation simply contained in higher prices for goods and services.