On Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:15:55 -0800, Rich Grise
wrote:

Ignoramus1796 wrote:
On 2011-03-07, KD7HB wrote:
The local IRS agent reads this news group and has made notes to look
at your next year's tax return to see how you report this money!

Naturally, I report all my income.

We could solve all our taxation problems by replacing the income tax
with an outgo tax. Don't tax what people _earn_ (or steal, etc.), tax
them when they _SPEND_ it!

Buy a $10,000,000.00 mansion, pay $1,000,000.00 purchase tax.
Buy a $100,000.00 diamond necklace for the princess's coming out present,
pay $10,000.00 purchase tax.

Pay $6,000.00 for a designer suit, pay $600.00 purchase tax.
Pay $600.00 for a decent working suit, pay $60.00 purchase tax.
Pay sixty bucks for a passable suit at the Salvation Army thrift shop, pay
ZERO tax; grocery store food, medicine and medical supplies, and pre-owned
items would be exempt. (We might need a little discussion about used cars
and used houses.)

And this should appease the "tax the rich" crowd - if somebody spends
$500,000,000.00 on stock certificates, commodities futures, bonds, or
etc. on Wall Street, he pays $50,000,000.00 purchase tax. :-

But, of course, the fat cats (of both wings) will fight it tooth and nail,
because they wouldn't be able to evade it like they do now with the income
tax. When you write the boat store guy your check for $350,000.00 for the
custom Cigarette, it's a little hard to hide it; he collects the $35,000.00
purchase tax at the Point of Sale. :-

And it would encourage saving on the part of those of us who don't need much
stuff. :-)

Cheers!
Richard the Dreaded Libertarian

=========
The problem is that this consumption tax or VAT will be "in
addition to" rather than "in place of" the existing tax
structure. Also we already have state sales taxes at or
near 10% in many areas, and real estate taxes over a few
years can exceed the price of the home [excluding interest].

Another area that should be considered is a capital levy on
total net worth for high income/high worth individuals no
matter where their wealth is located nor what form it is in.
This would partially avoid tax dodging, cheating, avoidance
and evasion. IIRC Denmark has a 1% capital levy on personal
assets above a certain limit in addition to the usual VAT,
income, auto, etc. etc. taxes. Anybody on the group from
Denmark that can tell us how this is working?


-- Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).