Thread: GOP may OK tax increase

9% tax on eceryone and all pllificans must make a budget with how much that generates or pay the difference with their personal money.

Flat tax, baby! w00t!

Originally Posted by C-B-M

Flat tax, baby! w00t!

How dare you think everyone should equaly pay

I know, I'm only admitting it because I'm on an anonymous Internet forum.

Originally Posted by C-B-M

I know, I'm only admitting it because I'm on an anonymous Internet forum.

God bless Al Gore for inventing it lol

I never speak ill of Al Gore because he might become enraged and eat me.

Originally Posted by C-B-M

I never speak ill of Al Gore because he might become enraged and eat me.

Lol

Originally Posted by jviehe

I dont do split quotes.

I kinda get that.

My point is simply that the way it's written is fucking stupid.

Understand though that I'm not very well read on the Fair Tax since a major tax overhaul isn't really something I think is even remotely possible and investing any real time in understanding it would probably be a waste. So bear with me.

Okay.

My understanding of the "prebate" is that its intended purpose is to preemptively offset taxation on things that have been deemed to be "necessities".

To wit, some economic luminary determines that the average household will spend $X.XX on official "necessities" in a given tax year so in order mitigate that expense to the taxpayer the government cuts prebate checks for everyone in that amount.

Ummmm, okay.

But in order to arrive at anything even approximating an accurate "prebate" figure the government first has to arrive at some determination of what exactly it's going to consider a necesity.

Right?

And that's where things get kind of screwy for me.

If the government has determined that milk, for example, is a necessity and that I need to be preimbursed for any tax I might pay on milk in a given year then why the fuck would the government tax me on milk in the first place?

To keep things "fair"?

If I'm not going to be required to pay a tax on milk, and you're not going to be required to pay a tax on milk, and the government is going to keep things "fair" by ensuring that once we pay our tax on milk it will already have offset the cost of that additional taxation by prebating the tax - THEN WHY TAX ME ON MILK AT ALL?

Or is the government going to decide for me just how much milk it's appropriate for me to have and then only prebate enough to ensure that I don't miss paying tax on more than my fair share of milk?

See, that doesn't sound fair to me.

It sounds complicated and requires some bean counter to guestimate the price of a commodity in advance and to calculate the average daily milk consumption in America and it doesn't make any allowances for families who actually eat healthy meals (who might drink a lot of milk) versus families who eat shitty meals (and hardly drink any milk at all) and it penalizes people who do eat health by overtaxing them on a healthy necessity and incentivizes an unhealthy lifestyle by discouraging the consumption of milk in order to save the tax prebate you'll have recieved under the assumption that you'll actually drink milk because it's been deemed a necessity.

But wouldn't everyone also be treated the same if you just said: "Milk is a necessity. Nobody pays tax on milk!"

Seems simple enough to me. Milk is a necessity, we don't tax necessities, nobody pays tax on milk, fair is fair, and done.

I'm not asking you (or anyone really) to argue over whether or not a hypothetical change will happen.

I will ask you this though, is there more room for manipulation, and pandering to a constiuency, and potential corruption when you make a system really simple and keep the government out of it in so far as a practicable or when you make things excessively complicated and require some bureaucrat to gaze into a crystal ball to predict supply and demand figures for a nation of 300 million people who might have differing values when it comes to determining what is and isn't a necessity?

I know what I'd answer.

The Fair Tax is just so much more bullshit.

Only the government could try to sell the notion that involving the government in a transaction that doesn't require any governmental involvment at all is in everyone's best interest.

If fair is fair, and it's not fair to charge people a tax on necessities, then just don't charge a tax on necessities.

Don't give me a prebate which has been arrived at in a completly arbitrary manner and then charge me a tax to recoup your prebate.

That shit just keeps folks beholden to the government for a portion of their gross yearly income and it allows the government to concoct retarded formulas for determining the level of subsidy the American people need.

Agree to disagree then. Its better than our current system. I would be happy to endorse something even better.

Originally Posted by soot

a major tax overhaul isn't really something I think is even remotely possible

Absolutely right. That's because the power to control the tax code -- to exempt or penalize who you want -- is extremely coveted in Washington. You don't get to be any old loser and be on the committee that controls the tax code. That's why it would NEVER change to any simple form of taxation. The tax code is approximately 13,500 PAGES LONG currently.

A flat tax would make it one sentence long.