Oh good heavens help us...

[kellinator]

The latest idea from Herr Shrub: Let's get rid of the income tax and replace it with a national sales tax.

This is the worst idea I've heard from the Idiot-in-Chief since... oh, who's counting?

I don't know a lot about economics, but I come from Tennessee, home of one of the highest sales taxes in the nation (including on food, and yes I do mean groceries). And sales taxes are definitely regressive.

Do the math. Say a person needs x amount of food to survive, taxed at 8%. For Bill Gates that tax is nothing; for the average middle-class American it's an 8% jump in the food bill. Talk about your cost of living increase...

I guess this is his way of saying he doesn't think he's put enough of the tax burden on the middle and lower class.

And if this post pisses you off, I don't give a fuck.

EDIT: Excellent article from resipsaloquitor:
http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/11/news/economy/election_tax/index.htm?cnn=yes

Comments

[polychromatic22.livejournal.com]

If your jeans cost $50, it's suggesting that 23% of that money be taxed federally, that's 11.5 dollars. Add in the 7 percent state sales tax that the great majority of the nation is paying and that becomes $15 dollars in tax on a $50 pair of jeans. Your %50 pair of jeans are now $65. I'm fairly damn poor though, and can't buy jeans that cost more than $15. Which means I'll pay 3.45 in federal taxes and state taxes make that $4.50 which makes my 15 dollar jeans $19.50. This is assuming that all businesses will not lower their prices in the least (despite the fact that it would make them more competitive for the sudden spending dollars that the public will have) when they no longer have payroll taxes of their own.

My math sucks, and I feel like crap right now, so I'm not positive all those figures are correct.

Unless you make a sales tax that is more than 100% you cannot logically have the tax cost more than the item. Unless you were just speaking metaphorically?

Even then, usually I go for used, and there's no tax on used goods proposed in hr 25.

At this point the median wage earning american is paying taxes (income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, ad valorum taxes, medicare and social security) that amount to them going nearly half the year and not getting paid.
If you consider that a medium sized chunk, I don't know what to say.