Comments (14)

• What is fair?

• I am with Walter E. Williams on this "Fair Tax" crap: There is simply NO fair method to extract $3 trillion or 22% of GDP from the citizenry. The only real way to make it fairer would be to reduce the $3 trillion. I have several ways to do this:
  1. Stop the ongoing wars.
  2. Allow the young to opt out of Anti-Social Un-Security.
  3. Cut by 1/2 all new defense projects.
  4. Cut all soldiers from foreign countries by 40 countries per year for the next 5 years.

  This scheme is very fair to estates and investors of capital. What about investors in Real Estate? What about Gold or Silver? What about derivatives?

  And basic necessities are taxed? What about home owners in LA, NY and/or SF? Do they get taxed? Will their Pre-Pends pay for this? What about people living in expensive places like Hawaii or Long Island?

  This really isn't fair at all.

• Published: April 1, 2008 5:05 PM

• McCARTER

• InDefinition.com attempts to identify the foundation of the concept “FAIR.”
  Many conflicts are the result of package deals and anti-concepts.
  Taxation is an issue of enforced government policy.
  Package deals of Tax Assessment, and Funding lead to disputes.
  See: TaxJudas.com
  Protective Tariffs on imports have been justified by the patriotic funding of National Defense.
  Justice is the concept which applies to Taxation.
  Justice is enforced by Government.
  Government maintains peaceful relations and defends against foreign aggression.
  Gasoline and Fuel taxes pay for highways.
  Sales Tax is comparable to Fuel taxes: simple, proportionate to benefits of social co-operation.

  Justice is the concept for enforced taxation— and the concept to authorize expenditure.
  Taxation removes vitality from citizens—
  Tax funded activities should arrest violent aggression and resolve disputes (civil courts).
  McCARTER

• Published: April 1, 2008 6:21 PM

• Inquisitor

• So the violation of property rights is now known as "justice"? Interesting to know.

• Published: April 1, 2008 6:44 PM

• Jay In Md.

• cutting defense will help only short term. The largest and fastest growing part of the budget is entitlements and debt servicing. I've heard that in 2060 or so, these two items will consume 100% of the federal budget and will STILL be growing, leading to an ever increasing tax rate.

  We need to get beyond "all we have to do is cut defense sending". And analyze the ENTIRE budget. (not saying defense spending can't be cut, but we need to do more)

• Published: April 1, 2008 8:48 PM

• newson

• australia introduced a "goods and services tax", (roughly similar to the uk's vat) in 2000. this was a conservative government initiative, and was accompanied by a flashy media campaign, complete with joe cocker "unchain my heart" soundtrack! some mandarin at least had a sense of humour, because the overall tax burden has increased, and yet another layer of bureaucracy has been added.
  the erstwhile treasurer even had the audacity to suggest it would hit the black economy hard, because of the paper trail. yet if you want a tradesman to make a service call, you'd better have cash. and i hope joe cocker cops a tax audit for his part. ruined a good song too.
  

• Published: April 2, 2008 3:36 AM

• newson

• australia introduced a "goods and services tax", (roughly similar to the uk's vat) in 2000. this was a conservative government initiative, and was accompanied by a flashy media campaign, complete with joe cocker "unchain my heart" soundtrack! some mandarin at least had a sense of humour, because the overall tax burden has increased, and yet another layer of bureaucracy has been added.
  the erstwhile treasurer even had the audacity to suggest it would hit the black economy hard, because of the paper trail. yet if you want a tradesman to make a service call, you'd better have cash. and i hope joe cocker cops a tax audit for his part. ruined a good song too.
  

• Published: April 2, 2008 3:37 AM

• Person

• In case anyone's forgotten by now, Laurence_M._Vance's arguments against the FairTax can be summarized as:

  1) Taxes are bad.

  2) Something other than the FairTax is bad. (i.e. "it'll get butchered in committee...")

  3) Voters will replace it with something worse later, based on this political science theory that I won't mention or justify.

  4) FairTax advocates are dumb and evil.

  I'm not kidding. Every argument he has ever made is some variant on that. And in every discussion, someone brings up a different argument, that genuinely can't be classified a one of those, and someone will claim he made that argument somewhere, even though he didn't.

  My problem with Laurence_M._Vance's line of reasoning (beyond the obvious) is that you could say the exact same thing about any policy, including drastic reduction in the size or scope of government. Example:

  "The LowTax would reduce all income taxes to 5% for everyone, with no deductions."

  Great policy, right? Wrong, at least by Laurence_M._Vance's standard.

  Laurence_M._Vance's response:

  The LowTax is bad because:

  -It will raise taxes on people who currently pay no net income tax.
  -Taxes are bad.
  -These "LowTaxers" are deceiving everyone into believing that taxes are okay as long as they're low.
  -LowTaxers just want a giant federal government, those statist jerks.
  -It will put the government deeper into debt, meaning more taxes later.
  -Politicians will use this to justify massive taxes elsewhere and voters will approve.

  And so on.

  Look guys, if you find yourself arguing against a reduction in income taxes to 5%, it's time to check some premises...

• Published: April 2, 2008 9:03 AM

• Inquisitor

• What I'm curious about is what is the point of a sales tax? Why not just have a flat income tax at 23%, say, with a negative income tax for the poor, or something along those lines? What advantages does it offer over and above a lower income tax? I am against all taxation, but surely the main consideration is that lower taxes are better?

• Published: April 2, 2008 11:07 AM

• Blurg

• A sales tax makes no sense whatsoever from an economic point of view. If government was organized as a private enterprise, it would price its services, insurance from violence, in order to reflect the cost of producing them. This means that one would pay based on how exposed to claims risk they are, which generally implies a straight property tax.

• Published: April 2, 2008 1:30 PM

• P.M.Lawrence

• Inquisitor, one of the issues with a tax is where it first falls as opposed to where it ultimately ends up (impact or "legal incidence" as against incidence). The personal pain is always that much greater when a tax is a direct personal tax like an income tax, particularly if the money has been in the person's hands or if the person has been directly subjected to its collection as with filling in a tax return and/or otherwise being forced to comply. With a sales tax, on the other hand, even when the buyer and seller are each natural persons, there is that much less personal connection; that is, neither develops as much sense of psychological loss.

  Of course, none of this justifies indirect taxes, it merely shows the kind of additional harm done by direct ones - not harm of an economic kind, so most discussions tune it out, but as real and significant in its way as surgery without anaesthesia.

  And there is the risk of "false dichotomy", of supposing that the two alternatives are the only options. There are many other ways of skinning the cat, and often of not skinning it at all.

• Published: April 3, 2008 5:43 AM

• Inquisitor

• That is true. I suppose if one wished to adopt a different approach they could argue this would make the tax harder to bear, and thus less likely to be tolerated, keeping people alert to the government's activities.

• Published: April 3, 2008 6:57 AM

• billwald

• The Government only has two choices: inflation or higher taxes. The citizens only have two choices: go along with the government or a shooting revolution.

  Eliminating the shooting revolution as against Libertarian principles, Libertarians only have two choices: a tax system which is more invasive to business or a tax system which is more invasive to big business.

  I suggest replacing the income tax system with a VAT on any form of business that has a business license or its own federal tax number. This will at least minimize government snooping people's private activities.

  
  

• Published: April 4, 2008 12:04 PM

• new

• to billwald:
  where's your cut-off line separating "business" and "big business"? and how do you make this distinction?

• Published: April 5, 2008 8:55 AM

• billwald

• Thanks for pointing out my typo. Should have been:

  "Libertarians only have two choices: a tax system which is more invasive to business or a tax system which is more invasive to citizens."

  Is there any other choice? Harass everyone and every thing? I suppose "big business" is any business that files government paperwork.

  For example, some small builders give two
  estimates, with or without paperwork. If the home owner is willing to pay cash and get his own permits he gets a much lower bid.

• Published: April 7, 2008 8:27 PM