It's just like gun control. Fail until you get the laws you want.
If I was a government interested in total control, I would insist on NRST and then, continuously step up "enforcement" to catch "tax cheats. It's just like gun control. Fail until you get the laws you want."
Hello? ... Is anybody home?
They already have the laws they want.
An income tax provides the government with everything that they want.
A recent national survey revealed that 58% of Americans fear the IRS more than they fear God. That is exactly what our elected officials want.
Why do you think that some of them are pushing the flat income tax? It gives them a way to "claim" that they are for tax reform, without doing anything that will actually cure the problems with the current system. They are afraid of giving up withholding, because it would mean many more citizens demanding accountability for every 1/2% tax increase, just as they are in Virginia. And, they certainly don't want to give up the ominous intimidation factor that the IRS gives them.
A National Retail Sales Tax (NRST) will take both of those things from government. Instead of the people fearing the government, the government will fear the people. As Thomas Jefferson said, "When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
Furthermore, the income tax moles' baseless claims of tax cheating with the NRST are absurd. The NRST is collected as an add-on item, paid entirely by the consumer and collected by the retailer. The only company that would risk cheating on a sales tax is a company that is already failing and has nothing to lose if the feds should crack down on it. Think about it.
Is Walmart, Sears or Target going to risk a billion dollar business by cheating on a tax that is simply added on to their price and paid entirely by the consumer? In fact, any profitable business is not going to risk that business by cheating on an add-on cost that is borne entirely by the consumer. The only way that a consumer will be able to get around the sales tax is to buy used items. In other words, tax cheating will be a lot less of a problem with a NRST than with any type of income based tax.
But, the primary thing that the NRST will do is reverse the serious capital flight that threatens to send our economy into an irrecoverable downward spiral. Roughly 100,000 mostly wealthy Americans expatriated last year. The Forbes lists of wealthiest Americans and lists of worldwide billionaires shows that since 1999, the number of billionaires in the United States has dropped over 13%, with a corresponding drop in average net worth, while the number of worldwide billionaires has increased by over 80%. The wealthy are leaving and it's not because of the tax level. It's because of the IRS.
A multimillionaire expatriate friend of mine, who now lives on an island paradise, explained it to me as follows:
"I make $2 million a year. I could easily afford to pay half that amount in taxes and I would still make more in one day than I could spend the next. What I can't afford, is to have my entire fortune confiscated at one time."
That individual left the United States in 1997, shortly after the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was signed into law (26 USC 877(a)(1)). That's the law that claims the right of the United States to tax the earnings of expatriates for 10 years after they have expatriated and have citizenship in another country. So, when my friend and hundreds of thousands of other wealthy individuals who have expatriated since 1996, did leave, they were forced to take ALL of their wealth with them.
Keep in mind that these people have serious accountants and lawyers to legally keep their tax bill at a fraction of what most people pay. It's generally considered by most upper income people, that if you pay more that 10% of your gross income in taxes, then you are overpaying. It's not the level of taxation that is driving them off. It is the fear that a single non-elected bureaucrat, in a federal agency with NO OVERSIGHT, could sign a paper and all of their wealth could suddenly be confiscated, regardless of where that wealth was earned or is domiciled and the burden of proof for them to get their assets back is on them.
If only the top 1% of taxpayers should leave (they pay over 36% of tax collected), then those remaining, would be faced with a 55% tax increase, just for the government to stay even. Well guess what. Almost 1/10 of a percent left last year. At that rate, how long will it take to lose most of that 1.26 million that comprise the top 1% of taxpayers? Think about it...
The capital flight situation is covered in much more detail in the article, "Tick-Tick- Tick - The Economy Bomb". This is especially serious now, with all of the news about companies like Stanley Tools and Cooper Industries expatriating. Those news items are drawing more attention to offshore opportunities for individuals, as well and could easily spark a sharp increase in expatriations. If you have not read that article, you really should take a moment to do so. It has lot's of links to source data and will shed a whole new light on the tax issue.
Even if you don't think that the NRST is perfect, the current level of capital flight and brain drain is so severe, that some version of the NRST must be passed soon, if this nation is to survive. Any attempt at tax reform that leaves the IRS intact will have the same effect as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. At this time, the NRST is the only option on the table that will not only stop capital flight, but reverse it and that is critical.