Except in the two years surrounding the conversion, it would totally devastate the US economy. And that is not hyperbole.
Let's say all of these years you have been saving your money to buy a house. All of this money that you saved has been taxed already. Now someone want to sell their house to you that was built during an income tax year. The cost of the labor of all aspects of the house building has been factored into the sale price of the house. Down the street, they are ready to build a new house in a sales tax year. The new house will NOT have the cost of taxed labor factored into it and both houses will have to collect a sales tax. The older house is now artifically more expensive than the new one and the owner of the used house will take it in the shorts - even to the point of paying to get out of the house. Now you as the buyer, are you willing to pay for a house with taxed income dollars and then pay a tax again to purchase either house? Of course not, you will contract to buy the house at the very last moment in before the system changes over so that you will avoid paying the new sales tax.
Now extrapolate this over the entire economy over every big-ticket item. Guess what? You will have massive levels of debt as people put the smallest amount of money down to buy something in the income tax year so they can pay for it with non-taxed dollars the following years. For the first year the tax revenues will be nill as no one is buying anything expensive, and the interest on the borrowed money is far less than an income tax or the sales tax. The economy will essentially shutdown in terms of sales as businesses attempt to fill orders for things bought the previous year.
Will the sales tax interfere with used car sales? Will the taxman show up to garage sales to make sure that every dime is collected, tabulated and sent to the proper government agency? How about those lemon-aid stands? Priv
Then there is the black-market economy that the illegals have mastered, just look at what happened when cigarette taxes went through the roof? The smuggling and back street selling of goods, pioneered by drug dealers will become a major employer and career field.
Not that your point about big ticket items isn't valid. In fact, it seems so obvious that I wonder if there is a credible rebuttal out there. This can't be the first time the issue has been raised, can it?
There will be price stability.
The house with taxed materials will not have the retail sale tax due on it, as it has already been taxed (albeit piecemeal). So prices of the homes will be the same.
And yes, you are using hyperbole... to a grreat extent.
The bill taxes things once and only once. Hence the house that was built with tax costs included has already been taxed and will not be taxed again.
The bill is quite short, you should read it because you are making decisions on bad information.
The bill is here, enter "HR25".
Yes, changeover will have challenges - but that is not "totally devastating the US economy".
Why not? Prices of things will be the same with our income tax or a national sales tax.
Your premise is flawed in that you assert that things can be taxed twice under the nrst. It is at the very heart of the nrst to tax things only once.
When you take a few minutes to read the bill or a synopsis, you will see that things manufactured with income taxed goods and services will NOT pay the national retail sales tax.
So your jumping-off point was bad.