The one where organized crime smuggles cigarettes and alcohol into this country and has for AT LEAST the last 89 years. Perhaps you would like to explain the initial justification for the "revinooers" of the ATF? At 8% you won't see much sales tax cheating; at 25% you will.
...organized crime smuggles cigarettes and alcohol into this country and has for AT LEAST the last 89 years.
Yes. And none of that underground income is taxed today.
A National Retail Sales Tax (NRST) would tax the consumer purchases of those who receive that income. Even if the criminals at the bottom of the mob totem pole acquire a large part of their personal goods from illegal sources, we would still get a significant sum in taxes from the higher-ups. After all, the mob bosses aren't about to risk a multi-million dollar operation by having a stolen Rolex on their arm or by driving a stolen Mercedes, either of which, they could have bought for a few thousand dollars legally. That would be as stupid as a guy that just got away with a half a million dollars in a bank heist, getting picked up on shop lifting charges. The big guys aren't going to risk it.
So what, if some of the small fry mobsters manage to get around some sales tax. What we get from the mob bosses and the middle men, who can't afford to be caught with stolen goods, will be a lot more than we are currently getting from the underground economy. While we are trying to figure out a way to beat them, at least the NRST would give us a way to make them help pay for our efforts to put them out of business. In fact, I read an article last year that said that if only the top 2% of mobsters were to pay a 23% sales tax on 90% of their personal purchases, that amount of tax would be more than we are currently expending on fighting organized crime. In other words, organized crime would be footing the entire federal bill for fighting organized crime. That's a d@#n sight better than the income tax has done.
Another point that you should keep in mind, is that all of the Know Your Customer laws that are supposed to target organized crime are actually meant for people like you and me. The last time that I read anything about how many people had been snagged by Know Your Customer, the number of arrests was in the tens of thousands, yet the number of mobsters arrested on Know Your Customer evidence was just two or three. That's because mob money is routed through a long established chain of companies and lawyers that are controlled by other mobsters. By the time the mob boss makes a deposit in his account, the money is clean. The real purpose of Know Your Customer, was to indiscriminately monitor law abiding citizens. In that respect, it's working.
But, the main reason that we must pass the NRST, is that the increasing aggressiveness of the IRS and laws surrounding the collection of taxes, are driving our wealthiest citizens to leave this country in record and increasing numbers and taking all of their wealth with them. Roughly 100,000 people left the United States last year. It's a safe bet that almost all of them were wealthy, rather than poor. Since the top 1% (1.2 million) of taxpayers pay over 36% of all personal income tax collected, if we lost most of that top 1%, everyone who is left would have to support a more than 55% tax increase, just to stay even.
We can either stick with the income tax and and allow organized crime to continue to escape most taxes, while the wealthiest legitimate taxpayers continue to take large amounts of our tax base out of the country with them or we can adopt a NRST and begin collecting significant taxes from organized crime, while capital flight reverses. Tough choice, huh?
You see, like it or not, the NRST is the only way to go at this time.