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karen gray · Joined: 12 May 2008 08:57 am Posts: 18

David,

Bruce Bartlett has been discredited by whom, exactly? The part I used intentionally was about the deceptiveness of the "inclusive" tax rate which is designed to make what you pay look smaller.

The essentials are these...

At every level, people will pay more. I just went to the so-called "Fairtax" website and calculated my little "prebate." According to the effective tax tables I presented earlier, I do much better under the current system. By the way, to calculate my "prebate," or monthly check from Uncle Sam under your sales tax, I need the kind of deduction information I have to gather now under the current system. So where is the savings in hassle? The IRS will still be needed, and I am paying more. The advantage is, what again?

This is becoming tiresome because facts and figures are countered by sweeping, unsubstantiated shibboleths, like, "once people see how much they are paying in taxes..." I showed you according to government figures exactly what they are paying. No one, I repeat, no one with any sense, from bottom to top, will pay less under your new system...no one.

Using reality, that is to say a tax exclusive method of figuring, if you are giving everyone in the bottom 80% back the same percentage of prebate I get, you are cutting your tax take by roughly 20%. That means the tax rate necessary to fund the budget at break even, discounting the off-budget war and not paying down a dime of the debt, is 30%. That does also not include what the government will spend paying itself the sales tax on everything it buys from paper clips to stealth bombers. That too, will go up 30%...and so on and so on.

Look guys, the current system is way too complicated. It could easily be simplified into a no-deductions, stairstep system retaining progressivity and keep the rate at each level as low as is practical. This is a chimera and once I saw the "prebate" calculator, just as records-intensive as the current system.

More in taxes, keep the IRS, and no less complication. Someone again tell me the advantages here?

Karen

Steve Keller · Joined: 13 May 2008 10:22 am Posts: 17

Karen,

I�m sorry 50% of what you say doesn�t make any cense and the other 50% is totally wrong. You ask for someone to tell you the advantages of the FairTax. If you have read HR25 you shouldn�t require anyone to tell you the advantages. If you have read the bill and you still don�t know the advantages, me explaining them would be like explaining nuclear fusion to a first grader.

You ask who has discredited Bruce Bartlett. The answer is simple; millions of Americans who really understand the FairTax. I always thought of Bruce Bartlett as a very knowledgeable economist until I read his take on the FairTax. It was very obvious his comments came without much study.

You say at every level, people will pay more under the FairTax. The bill is designed to be revenue neutral so where dose this reasoning come from. Any family who earns poverty level income will pay no tax. Under our current system, anyone earning the poverty level still has 7.65 deducted from their paychecks for S.S. and Medicare. One thing for sure all illegal immigrants, drug dealers, and tourists will be paying more.

You say to calculate your "prebate," or monthly check from Uncle Sam under your sales tax, you need the kind of deduction information you have to gather now under the current system. What are you talking about? All you need to know is the total number of legal S.S. card holders in your household. What deductions do you need to gather?

karen gray · Joined: 12 May 2008 08:57 am Posts: 18

Steve,

Haven't you even gone to your website to calculate your "prebate?" You need to provide consumer interest paid, mortgage interest, charitable donations, tuition costs...sound familiar? In other words, you need to do every month what we now do once a year.

As I suspected, you have no real answer to Bruce Bartlett's arguments, except to say he's wrong. For those just joining us, Bartlett eviscerated the national sales tax idea exposing the deceptive 23% "inclusive" rate, which is actually 30% or more. Bartlett was Bush 1's Under-Secretary of the Treasury.

You also have no answer for the CBO's estimates on an actual rate of sales tax needed that goes even higher. I'm being kind with 30%.

I went back to see what a married couple below the poverty line at, say, $18,000 a year get in your "prebate" check. It's about $391 a month. That is more than they pay in social security, which is about $135 or so. But, run through their budget for a month, rent, gas, water, power, food, phone, etc, and figure 30% more for all those things and see where they come out. the increase in prices far outstrips the check you're sending them, even after you subtract what SS and Medicare cost them.

As I said before, I have patiently laid out for everyone in other posts, the actual, effective tax rates for everyone right up to the top 1%. There is no quintile (sorry, Steve, tough word) wherein the average rate for both income and social taxes is over 21-22%.

Here comes the broken record...If you really want a break even tax system, you have to raise $3.1 trillion (Bush's latest budget request). Actually, to be fiscally responsible, you have to raise more to pay for this war and to provide Social Security for Boomers, and more importantly, Medicare. Medical inflation will eat your lunch. We'll save why for another discussion.

You also want to pay down some debt, since debt service is the 4th largest chunk of our national budget (roughly $226 billion). The debt, by the way, is $9.3 trillion right now, and closing in on parity with our GDP.

The old canard of simply cutting something like foreign aid or the Council for the Arts won't fly either to anyone who knows the budget. Cut away on these miniscule programs...fine with me. You're still in deep doo-doo. A suggestion...Google the US budget and look at the percentages. After what most of us would consider the essentials, you're left with about 35% of the budget to play with, and frankly, much of that is essential.

I'm trying to use facts and figures versus ad-hominem attacks, but this is growing fairly tiresome. Answer the bloody questions or stop posting. Tell me how you pay for all this? Don't continue this scam of a 23% tax without explaining how that's really calculated (as 23% of a price with the 23% already added to it).

Saying "your wrong, your wrong, your wrong" isn't an argument. This prebate was added to try to make this more palatable vis-a-vis the poor. So with income taxes as 43% of our national income, social insurance taxes nearly 35%, corporate taxes 14.7% and another 7% or so from other sources including excise, how are you going to get it done? And more importantly, how do you handle the inflation that's coming when the government has to start paying your tax as well? That $3.1 trillion will grow by the same percentage as your household bills, 30% or more.

It's a lovely, simplistic illusion. Fortunately, it doesn't have a snowball's chance...

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