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virgil
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### Effin' Fairtax, how does that work?

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Post by virgil » Fri Aug 31, 2012 7:27 pm

Someone pointed out to me Fairtax.org, as an option of replacing the tax system. However, I'm not very well versed and the site's FAQ is going to be obviously biased in painting itself in as positive a light as possible, possibly even misleading as I've seen numerous Republicans extol its virtues. Does anyone have a layman's summary of it?
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants » Fri Aug 31, 2012 7:32 pm

I haven't gotten a chance to read the article, but here is RationalWiki's article.
(the site seems to be having problems now)
Last edited by RobbyPants on Fri Aug 31, 2012 7:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Username17
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### Re: Effin' Fairtax, how does that work?

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Post by Username17 » Fri Aug 31, 2012 7:47 pm

> virgil wrote:Someone pointed out to me Fairtax.org, as an option of replacing the tax system. However, I'm not very well versed and the site's FAQ is going to be obviously biased in painting itself in as positive a light as possible, possibly even misleading as I've seen numerous Republicans extol its virtues. Does anyone have a layman's summary of it?

The idea is that you replace income taxes with consumption taxes. That is, your wages are given to you in full with no tax bite, but then everything you buy in a store costs like 1/3 more than it does now to compensate. Supposedly, this is because everyone spends all their money, so that way you'd get totally flat taxes.
This is, of course, total horseshit. The first problem is that people actually don't spend all their money, and that richer people save more of the money they take in. Thus, the effective tax rate on people who make a lot of money is considerably lower than it is on poor people. The second problem is that poorer people who expect to be making more money in the future (like say, students) will often be spending a lot more than they take in. But with a consumption tax, they have to pay the taxes on that future income while they are trying to get by on borrowed funds.
The third problem is that some people aren't going to pay the taxes at all by moving their purchases off the books. And that's going to be way easier to do now that the IRS isn't checking peoples' incomes. "Off books" is basically a euphemism for "buying shit from the mob". That is: buying a bottle of liquid detergent from the Vory is going to cost several dollars less than buying it from a legal storefront. Essentially the whole project entails a 30% subsidy on anything and everything that organized crime feels like selling - which means that you'll quickly find yourself getting clothes and cooking utensils from the Crips and the Bloods, because the savings will be literally criminal.
And finally I think it's important to note that when the national sales tax is 30% and people don't pay a dime in income or payroll taxes, that cross border shopping will become absolutely epic. You can bet your ass that Costcos and Walmarts will open on the Mexican and Canadian sides of every single border crossing. With "your entire calculated tax burden" at stake, spending even two or three hours to drive to the border would be totally acceptable for all major shopping trips. With gas costing 4 bucks a gallon and cars getting 30 miles to the gallon, Everyone who lives less than 110 miles from the border would save money on a $100 shopping trip by going to Canada. And for larger shopping trips, the distance increases proportionately. If you have a $2000 purchase you are considering, it is seriously worth your while to drive from Kansas all the way to maple country just to not pay those taxes. And that's if you just want to do things totally legally. Expect the rich to simply fly to Dubai just like they already do.
Basically it's the giantest clusterfuck you can possibly imagine.
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violence in the media
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Post by violence in the media » Fri Aug 31, 2012 8:28 pm

Don't forget about the part where the government is supposed to send everyone a monthly stipend to cover the portion of tax you'd theoretically be paying for rent, food, or other necessity items.
Yes, you heard that correctly, a conservative tax plan involves the government sending money to people on a monthly basis.
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PoliteNewb
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### Re: Effin' Fairtax, how does that work?

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Post by PoliteNewb » Fri Aug 31, 2012 8:40 pm

> virgil wrote:Someone pointed out to me Fairtax.org, as an option of replacing the tax system. However, I'm not very well versed and the site's FAQ is going to be obviously biased in painting itself in as positive a light as possible, possibly even misleading as I've seen numerous Republicans extol its virtues. Does anyone have a layman's summary of it?

And you think people responding on the Den are going to be unbiased...why, exactly?
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virgil
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### Re: Effin' Fairtax, how does that work?

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Post by virgil » Fri Aug 31, 2012 8:47 pm

> PoliteNewb wrote:And you think people responding on the Den are going to be unbiased...why, exactly?

They're going to be more succinct, I'm likely to hear some of the conservative counters from npc, and I'll hear counters that won't be brought up on their site's FAQ.
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The Vigilante
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### Re: Effin' Fairtax, how does that work?

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Post by The Vigilante » Fri Aug 31, 2012 8:58 pm

> PoliteNewb wrote:

> > virgil wrote:Someone pointed out to me Fairtax.org, as an option of replacing the tax system. However, I'm not very well versed and the site's FAQ is going to be obviously biased in painting itself in as positive a light as possible, possibly even misleading as I've seen numerous Republicans extol its virtues. Does anyone have a layman's summary of it?

> And you think people responding on the Den are going to be unbiased...why, exactly?

Reality is not unbiased though. Frank's critique of the FairTax is actually spot on and accurately describes the results you would get under such a tax reform. The only "positive" points you can make about this are :
1- Extreme simplification of the tax code
2- Discouraging consumption and encouraging savings.
And even then it is probably one of the most inefficient ways you can achieve #2.
I guess you think the FairTax is actually fair ? Then why don't you explain your point to virgil in a non-retarded, non-npc310 way ? Perhaps that would be more constructive than simply pointing out how "biased" we are. We are not beltway media, we don't have to pretend that both sides have a good point and are equally reasonable.
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K
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Post by K » Fri Aug 31, 2012 9:11 pm

It's also worth pointing out that discouraging consumption and encouraging savings is how you create recessions.
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The Vigilante
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Post by The Vigilante » Fri Aug 31, 2012 10:06 pm

> K wrote:It's also worth pointing out that discouraging consumption and encouraging savings is how you create recessions.

Yes and no. If you have sufficiently high public spending, you can have high level of private savings and still maintain adequate aggregate demand and thus reasonable growth. Of course the problem is the FairTax advocates probably don't want public spending to go up, so in this situation you are right.
Last edited by The Vigilante on Fri Aug 31, 2012 10:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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virgil
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Post by virgil » Fri Aug 31, 2012 10:26 pm

> Defense of Fairtax wrote:A National sales tax, if it replaced all other taxes instead of supplementing them, would be "fair". There would effectively be no tax on food or clothing, or anything purchased used. The first purchaser of an item would pay the NST, then if he sold it used, the subsequent purchaser would pay no tax. Older folks, retired, would pay taxes on new purchases, but if all they could afford to buy was a Chevy Aveo, then they would pay tax on that amount (app $12k). A millionaire who wanted a $200k Bentley would pay sales taxes on that amount: the more you spent, the more tax you would pay. The original plan has a lower limit built in, app $36500 a year would be immune from that tax, and anything that counted (not food or basic clothing) above that amount per year would be taxed. The govt would do this by figuring the tax on $36,500 per year, say $6000 and would send a check to every household for $500 every month, regardless of their income. This check would refund in advance any taxes spent on that $36,500.
> So, what would you do? If you took every cent from the wealthiest 10% not only would it not be enough to pay off the debt, but it would effectively discourage anyone else from working their butt off to get rich (and, incidentally, providing jobs for many others in the process).

Last edited by virgil on Mon May 06, 2013 4:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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The Vigilante
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Post by The Vigilante » Fri Aug 31, 2012 10:57 pm

> virgil wrote:

> > Defense of Fairtax wrote:Craig Rollins A National sales tax, if it replaced all other taxes instead of supplementing them, would be "fair". There would effectively be no tax on food or clothing, or anything purchased used. The first purchaser of an item would pay the NST, then if he sold it used, the subsequent purchaser would pay no tax. Older folks, retired, would pay taxes on new purchases, but if all they could afford to buy was a Chevy Aveo, then they would pay tax on that amount (app $12k). A millionaire who wanted a $200k Bentley would pay sales taxes on that amount: the more you spent, the more tax you would pay. The original plan has a lower limit built in, app $36500 a year would be immune from that tax, and anything that counted (not food or basic clothing) above that amount per year would be taxed. The govt would do this by figuring the tax on $36,500 per year, say $6000 and would send a check to every household for $500 every month, regardless of their income. This check would refund in advance any taxes spent on that $36,500.
> > So, what would you do? If you took every cent from the wealthiest 10% not only would it not be enough to pay off the debt, but it would effectively discourage anyone else from working their butt off to get rich (and, incidentally, providing jobs for many others in the process).

This is not a "defense"... it's effectively demonstrating why this plan is in no way fair nor fiscally responsible. And I'm getting pretty damn tired of the whole debt routine, running surplus is exactly the last thing that's needed in the US and the West in general right now. This is madness.
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PoliteNewb
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### Re: Effin' Fairtax, how does that work?

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Post by PoliteNewb » Fri Aug 31, 2012 11:54 pm

> virgil wrote:They're going to be more succinct

True enough.

> I'm likely to hear some of the conservative counters from npc

Why would you want to? He's an imbecile. If you want to hear conservative counters, talk to a reasonable conservative (if you can find one). Or hell, read the actual FairTax website, or google people talking about it.
Why the hell would you think npc310 of all people would be a decent source of "conservative support/explanation" for the FairTax?

> Reality is not unbiased though.

Sure it is. But everyone sees it through a biased filter.
I don't think you know what "bias" means. It doesn't have anything to do with who's right.

> I guess you think the FairTax is actually fair ?

Don't know, don't care. I have no interest in debating the FairTax. I just wanted to point out that anything he hears on this site is going to be no less biased than anything he reads on that site.
I am sure there are relatively unbiased people online who are willing to talk about the FairTax. But you will not find them on The Gaming Den. This place is a rant-hole.

> We are not beltway media, we don't have to pretend that both sides have a good point and are equally reasonable.

I know you don't, and thanks for owning your bias. My sole point was that Virgil shouldn't expect anything else.
I am judging the philosophies and decisions you have presented in this thread. The ones I have seen look bad, and also appear to be the fruit of a poisonous tree that has produced only madness and will continue to produce only madness.
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The Vigilante
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### Re: Effin' Fairtax, how does that work?

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Post by The Vigilante » Sat Sep 01, 2012 1:30 am

> PoliteNewb wrote:

> > virgil wrote:They're going to be more succinct

> True enough.

> > I'm likely to hear some of the conservative counters from npc

> Why would you want to? He's an imbecile. If you want to hear conservative counters, talk to a reasonable conservative (if you can find one). Or hell, read the actual FairTax website, or google people talking about it.
> Why the hell would you think npc310 of all people would be a decent source of "conservative support/explanation" for the FairTax?

> > Reality is not unbiased though.

> Sure it is. But everyone sees it through a biased filter.
> I don't think you know what "bias" means. It doesn't have anything to do with who's right.

> > I guess you think the FairTax is actually fair ?

> Don't know, don't care. I have no interest in debating the FairTax. I just wanted to point out that anything he hears on this site is going to be no less biased than anything he reads on that site.
> I am sure there are relatively unbiased people online who are willing to talk about the FairTax. But you will not find them on The Gaming Den. This place is a rant-hole.

> > We are not beltway media, we don't have to pretend that both sides have a good point and are equally reasonable.

> I know you don't, and thanks for owning your bias. My sole point was that Virgil shouldn't expect anything else.

I guess I'm just tired of all the supposedly 'unbiased' media not calling out blatant lies from politicians or other public actors. If it is a verifiable and demonstrable fact that some statement by public figure X is false, I think it should be the media's obligation to denounce it ; unfortunately you're more likely going to get something akin to 'parties disagreeing on age of the earth' type of headline. It's not just in the US either, it's just something that's going in North America (maybe in other English-speaking countries or 'Western', 'Liberal' countries too, I don't know) on a large scale and it's harming democracy. Maybe it's been going on forever but it stills annoys me.
The thing about FairTax bullshit, though, is that the only way you're going to get the kind of 'unbiased' opinion you seem to be looking for is by giving credence to the crappy, ill-founded economic theories that have landed us in this recession/depression in the first place. I dunno, this doesn't seem right to me, I guess I prefer to analyze policy with theories that fit what actually happened instead of simply prescribing the economical equivalent of further medical bloodletting.
Say what you want about the Den's delivery, but a shit sandwich is still a shit sandwich, and I won't take a bite in order to give it a fair review.
EDIT : I got your point, just arguing for the sake of arguing here.
Last edited by The Vigilante on Sat Sep 01, 2012 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Sep 01, 2012 1:39 am

> virgil wrote:

> > Defense of Fairtax wrote:Craig Rollins A National sales tax, if it replaced all other taxes instead of supplementing them, would be "fair". There would effectively be no tax on food or clothing, or anything purchased used. The first purchaser of an item would pay the NST, then if he sold it used, the subsequent purchaser would pay no tax. Older folks, retired, would pay taxes on new purchases, but if all they could afford to buy was a Chevy Aveo, then they would pay tax on that amount (app $12k). A millionaire who wanted a $200k Bentley would pay sales taxes on that amount: the more you spent, the more tax you would pay. The original plan has a lower limit built in, app $36500 a year would be immune from that tax, and anything that counted (not food or basic clothing) above that amount per year would be taxed. The govt would do this by figuring the tax on $36,500 per year, say $6000 and would send a check to every household for $500 every month, regardless of their income. This check would refund in advance any taxes spent on that $36,500.
> > So, what would you do? If you took every cent from the wealthiest 10% not only would it not be enough to pay off the debt, but it would effectively discourage anyone else from working their butt off to get rich (and, incidentally, providing jobs for many others in the process).

That is indeed what FairTax people say. And yeah, that's pretty effin crazy. Problems:

- They have no idea how much you've spent or what you've spent it on. So the exemptions for basic living expenses take the form of giving everyone a uniform pile of money.
- Their mentioning of the "Used Goods" exemption highlights a very big problem. Imagine for the moment that Gamestop splits itself into two companies and it buys wholesale as Gamestart which then sells all the goods "retail" to Gamestop for a few pennies. Then Gamestop announces that it is selling all those games used for their normal sticker price. Net Result: you buy a new Call of Duty game for fifty bucks and the total tax paid on that purchase (and the income that allowed you to buy it in the first place) is... one cent. This kind of bullshit totally works because taxes are only collected on "retail sales" and not on "profit". So taking a huge loss with one subsidiary and a huge profit with the other subsidiary qualifies as a titanic tax avoidance scheme.
- "not only would it not be enough to pay off the debt" is deliberate slight of hand on their part. The debt is like a fucking mortgage - we're paying it off over thirty years (and because we're an immortal country, it will doubtless be refinanced several times). The deficit is the amount of money we're short on a year to year basis. If someone tells you that a scheme is insufficient to "pay off the debt", they are lying to you. They are telling you that one year's payments are not enough to pay off a 30 year mortgage. That doesn't mean anything.
- A 30% sales tax is a 30% subsidy on buying foreign and black market goods. If you don't think that will shift buying patterns to fund organized crime and foreign countries then you don't believe in Free Market incentives.

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Post by DSMatticus » Sat Sep 01, 2012 1:54 am

PoliteNewb, your definition of bias is fucking terrible, and most importantly, wrong. It is exactly why rational discourse is impossible in the U.S.: you look at someone saying true and complete (i.e., accounting for all evidence) statements and you call bias because it doesn't 'fairly' represent two (or more) opinions arbitrarily chosen by people (i.e., not founded in observation or evidence). That's not how bias fucking works. A bias requires the exclusion of evidence or the ignorance of alternative explanations (accidental or intentional). If you are accounting for all the facts and your explanation is the most correct as a result, you are not being biased.
"The Earth is 4 billion years old" is not a biased statement. It is a true statement that accounts for all evidence and is the only worthwhile explanation. When someone says, unconditionally and unequivocally, that this is the case; they are not being biased!
"Being on fire hurts, is bad for your complexion, and can fucking kill you" is not a biased statement. It is a true statement. Trying to find a being on fire-neutral position isn't 'fair', it's stupid.
"FairTax puts a larger tax burden on the poor than the wealthy and discourages spending" is not a biased statement. It's a true statement. The only way to find a more neutral position is to lie.
"2+2=4" is not a biased statement because it does not fairly represent morons who can't do math and think 2+2=5.
The fact that some people on the Den are open about criticizing terrible things for being terrible for the reasons they are truthfully and factually terrible does not make them biased. Indeed, it makes them the opposite of biased; they aren't bending over backwards to present an alternative that is contrary to all observed evidence.
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Post by hyzmarca » Sat Sep 01, 2012 1:58 am

It would be easier to track purchases if you eliminated cash money altogether and simply gave everyone a government issued bank account at birth and required that they make all purchases using a bank card or subdermally implanted RFID chip tied to that account. That way it would be impossible to buy black market goods and hypothetically they'd be able to track foreign purchases and charge you tax retroactively.
And implanting people with subdermal RFID chips at birth has all sorts of other useful applications, like preventing long-term kidnappings, identifying bodies, tracking felons, and whatnot.
That wouldn't make the fairtax sane, but at least it would make it enforceable and go a long way towards preventing people from just going missing.
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Post by Josh_Kablack » Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:52 am

> hyzmarca wrote:It would be easier to track purchases if you eliminated cash money altogether and simply gave everyone a government issued bank account at birth and required that they make all purchases using a bank card or subdermally implanted RFID chip tied to that account. That way it would be impossible to buy black market goods ...

...without using some fungible non-traceable commodity which wasn't tracked on the same electronic system.
In prisons, they call those cigarettes. On the outside here in the realm of mere 6%+1% sales taxes I've heard rumors about disposable diapers and Tide detergent and have personally purchased services using CCGs cards and food from restaurants where I worked.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sat Sep 01, 2012 8:10 am

> PoliteNewb wrote:Don't know, don't care. I have no interest in debating the FairTax. I just wanted to point out that anything he hears on this site is going to be no less biased than anything he reads on that site.
> I am sure there are relatively unbiased people online who are willing to talk about the FairTax. But you will not find them on The Gaming Den. This place is a rant-hole.

I am beginning to see why the U.S. corporate whore media is so spineless. Aside from being a corporate whore media.
You know, it's intellectually lazy pricks like you that Martin Luther King specifically warned us about and set us back continually on the progress of civilization.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Post by Username17 » Sat Sep 01, 2012 4:44 pm

> hyzmarca wrote:It would be easier to track purchases if you eliminated cash money altogether and simply gave everyone a government issued bank account at birth and required that they make all purchases using a bank card or subdermally implanted RFID chip tied to that account. That way it would be impossible to buy black market goods and hypothetically they'd be able to track foreign purchases and charge you tax retroactively.
> And implanting people with subdermal RFID chips at birth has all sorts of other useful applications, like preventing long-term kidnappings, identifying bodies, tracking felons, and whatnot.
> That wouldn't make the fairtax sane, but at least it would make it enforceable and go a long way towards preventing people from just going missing.

Even that wouldn't work, because Fairtax doesn't trigger on all kinds of money transfers. All you have to do is "buy used" or pay "membership dues" or something and the tax doesn't trigger at all.
So people would pay money into "clubs" that incidentally happen to give you a "reward" of a "free frying pan" and shit. Or people would set up their corporations to sell through to themselves so that all of the sold goods are "previously owned". Basically, the FairTax is so trivially easy to bypass that I can't see as how it even applies to anything other than services, which are themselves classically performed under the table all the time.
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Post by hyzmarca » Sat Sep 01, 2012 4:59 pm

The thing is, people try that kind of loophole blatant tax loophole abuse right now. They generally go to Federal prison.
Those sorts of frauds done on any scale are going to be so obvious that basic pattern recognition software can flag them and then you're going to have men with guns politely telling you that you can pay all of the back taxes plus a penalty and go to prison for ten years, because they're so generous you don't have to choose between the two.
It doesn't take a forensic accountant to look at that sort of setup and say "no, sorry, we're not that gullible" but the IRS is going to put forensic accountants on it anyway, armies of them.
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Post by Whatever » Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:05 pm

hyzmarca, are you serious or trolling? I honestly cannot tell.
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Post by Josh_Kablack » Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:36 pm

Increasing any form of sales taxes is a horrible idea.
But anyone who thinks that the current mismash uneven patchwork of evermore regressive taxation that we have in this country is good is really ignorant.
And there are roughly zero politicians even talking about all-in tax burdens and the interactions between tax codes at the local, state and federal levels.
Here's a 15-minnit rant* from the hole about parts of it:
The City of Pittsburgh already has a bunch of tax-evasion by border-crossing going on regarding its income tax. When the tax rate on your earnings is determined by your place of residence and (generally) 2% lower in the suburbs than inside city limits - then it's highly advantageous for high-wage earners to live somewhere outside of the 58.3 square miles of the city proper but within the 5343 square miles of the metro area. If you're a low wage earner, then losing 3% vs 1% of your income to local taxes is often lower than the additional commuting costs, so it's okay to live in the city.
Of course, a number of commuters roughly equal to the entire population of the city proper commutes in to the city to work each weekday - meaning the the city has additional stress on its basic infrastructure such as (roads, police, ambulance and fire departments ) - all of which are funded via local taxes. This means that the low wage city residents taxes are subsidizing the high-wage commuters time at their high-paying jobs.
To counteract this, we have an Occupation Tax (also known as the EMS Tax or the Wage Tax) which is a flat $52 per year paid to the municipality in which you work instead of which you live. Now a fixed dollar amount is horribly regressive, and even more so as it's a wage tax which lets people living off investments avoid it. And then with the several major universities in town, it's a tax paid only by students with work study jobs, while students whose families can fully fund them avoid it - this is non trivial, since the largest university has ~20,000 undergraduates by itself
Then there are property taxes - which vary in rate by municipality, and Allegheny County has over 150 municipalities. Each municipality has certain baseline expenses to meet, and well the ones with the highest value properties can generate enough revenue to cover those expenses at a lower millage rate than municipalities with lower value properties - meaning that those rates tend toward outright regressive taxation, with people in poorer areas paying higher percentages.
And it's a well-intentioned Federal Tax deduction which encourages all of this regressive taxation at the local level. Because the social engineers who designed the tax code tried to encourage the laudable goal of home ownership via a mortgage interest deduction. So only families with incomes and expenses high enough to itemize benefit from it, and then due to the nature of federal marginal tax rates families with higher incomes benefit more from deductions from that income and then families with higher mortgage payments get to deduct more, meaning that federal taxes reward purchasing the most expensive house one can afford. Thus buying a spacious newly constructed place in an affluent suburbs nets a high-wage family a significant reduction in their federal tax burden and they also get a lower local income tax rate and local property tax rate than if they lived in the city proper.
And while I have heard a few national politicians decrying the mortgage interest deduction and talking about modifying it ( which will not happen due to political realities ) and a plethora local pols talking about the unfair realities of our Property taxes - I have not heard anyone at any level talking about the interaction between local income taxes, local property taxes, EMS tax and the federal deduction - even though the aggregate tax burden is what determines the optimal behavior for rational families.
*disclaimer: my only qualification is being a somewhat informed citizen and parts of this are horribly simplified (If you want more details, please reference: Allegheny County reassessment mess, Act 47, Regional Asset District Tax, First Time Homebuyers Credit, Property Tax Relief, Poured Drink Tax and Casino Licenses and talk to an accountant and a tax attorney)
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Sat Sep 01, 2012 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Lago PARANOIA
  Invincible Overlord
  Posts: 10555
  Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sat Sep 01, 2012 6:20 pm

Speaking of stealth regressive taxation, I personally can't think of any reason why there should WRT to the U.S. be a FICA tax.
I used to think that there needed to be a tax not to fund it so much as to provide political cover for future greedy members of the overclass and their blue collar pawns so that they can't get rid of it. But really, all this has done is to create a false dichotomy between Social Security and welfare even though the net effect is the same. In fact Social Security is more welfare than actual welfare.
I think that it's high time to show the man behind the curtain. Yes, seniors, you've been sucking at the government cock even more hardcore than the poor. Not that I'm judging you for it, I'm just pissed that you apparently think that your welfare is okay but other peoples' welfare is not.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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hyzmarca
  Prince
  Posts: 3909
  Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:07 pm

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Post by hyzmarca » Sat Sep 01, 2012 9:02 pm

> Whatever wrote:hyzmarca, are you serious or trolling? I honestly cannot tell.

\
Tax evasion is a crime, one that people do actually go to prison for. When you wholesale products to a subsidiary retailers for pennies and call it a retail sale as Frank suggests, that's fraud.
Yes, people and corporations intentionally take advantage of tax deductions all the time and that's perfectly fine and legal. However, creating a tax shelter for the sole purpose of abusing a deduction is a crime. The IRS does fine people and corporations for that and the Justice Department does put people in prison for it.
Note that going across state lines to make purchases in a jurisdiction that has lower taxes is also illegal in most US States. When you get back home you have to pay the full sales tax on what you bought out of state. This is practically unenforceable except with large purchases such as vehicles so most states don't bother except with vehicles.
The Fairtax is a bad plan because it is a regressive tax. It's a bad plan because it won't produce enough income. It's a bad plan because it'll discourage spending and hurt the economy. It isn't a bad tax because of the possibility of blatant fraud. We already have an organization that exists for the sole purpose of enforcing the tax code.
People who retail previously owned goods with a wink and a nudge would be shot down just as fast as people who claim that wages aren't income are today. Heck, existing state agencies that collect sales taxes are capable of detecting that sort of blatant fraud quite easily and do lay the smack down on it.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Sat Sep 01, 2012 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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K
  King
  Posts: 6487
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

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Post by K » Sat Sep 01, 2012 9:38 pm

> hyzmarca wrote:
> People who retail previously owned goods with a wink and a nudge would be shot down just as fast as people who claim that wages aren't income are today. Heck, existing state agencies that collect sales taxes are capable of detecting that sort of blatant fraud quite easily and do lay the smack down on it.

I hate to break it to you, but that's not true in a very observable way.
For example, Mitt Romney has 100 million in an IRA "retirement account" so to not pay taxes. Grocery stores have high ceilings so that they can be classed as "warehouses" and not pay retail store taxes. Google says that it's an Irish company so that it doesn't have to pay US taxes (and barely any in Ireland).
Businesses routinely obey the letter of the law while flouting the spirit of the law and no one ever charges them with fraud. Ever.
Hell, did you know that 2/3rds of US companies don't pay any federal taxes at all despite the fact that we are currently in a time of the greatest corporate profits ever?
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