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Originally Posted by djplong
I honestly think part of our problem is our overall method of taxation...I pay tazes to so many different jurisdictions, it's laughable. I pay more KINDS of taxes than I can shake a stick at. Each one of these agencies and jurisdictions have their own set of rules, their own legions of employees and their own bank of lawyers....I pay Federal income, FICA and Medicare taxes. Then there's state income tax, property tax, sales (when I'm in MA) and meals taxes. Excise taxes, registration fees, gas taxes, tolls, innumerable taxes piled on my electric and phone bills, travel taxes piled on my airline tickets for my daughter to visit me, hotel taxes, car rental taxes, "user fees", "imputed income" taxes on my life insurance premiums. If I save money I may have capital gains taxes. If I sell my house or buy one I have transfer taxes, municipal and state fees, recording fees. Unless they're included in my property taxes I may have taxes on my water and sewer bills (though in my town they're not). IN NH they just passed (and are about to repeal) a tax on campground sites, similar to the hotel rooms tax. If I ran a business here in NH, I might be subject to the Business Profits Tax. If I did exporting or importing, I'd have various treaties and tariffs that I'd have to abide by. In MA and other states, I can be taxed just on the things I OWN - "personal property tax", so that I keep paying and paying taxes on stuff I already bought....We need top-to-bottom, coast-to-coast, manufacturer-to-retail TAX REFORM. We need to streamline the number and types of taxes and the methodology for collecting them...How many people are in favor of the Flat Tax?...
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I'd be onboard for the Flat Tax. I'm less enamored with the Fair Tax. Instead of that, the idea I like best is the Value-Added Tax (VAT). That's the tax system most common in Europe. It's simply a tax levied at every level of the economy based on the value added at the time of sale of goods. Suppliers of raw materials would collect a tax from, say a distributor of those materials. The distributor would collect a tax when the material was sold to the manufacturer. The manufacturer would collect a tax when he sold his manufactured item to a wholesaler. The wholesaler to the retail re-seller, then again when it was sold to the consumer. The tax rate itself is quite small, but in total enough to pay for the desired level of government-provided services. Read more about it at...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax
But the problem with any single overall scheme of taxation is how do the tax revenues get split up between the various levels of government providing services...township, town, county, state, school district, fire district, park district, federal, etc. Wow! What a negotiation that might be.