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I must admit I agree with you, regarding corporate tax. Although I think it would need to be offset by a significant increase in capital gains/dividends tax, wh

by tomp 12y ago

I must admit I agree with you, regarding corporate tax. Although I think it would need to be offset by a significant increase in capital gains/dividends tax, which might be hard to achieve politically. Regarding sales tax, I don't see why VAT couldn't be manipulated in the same way. I don't know about other countries, but in Slovenia, books and food/non-alcoholic drinks have a lower VAT, and e.g. expensive cars (actually, those that have low mileage) have extra tax. The only advantage that I see of sales tax is that resale is taxed as well. Which would only obviously apply to big items (houses, cars), but people would avoid it by simply having their companies own these items. If sales tax were to apply to companies as well (i.e. companies selling stuff to companies), I would oppose it, because it effectively penalizes a long supply chain and encourages monolithic, vertically-integrated companies.

dogma1138 12y ago
Because VAT is only "created" when a business sells you something, it's an archaic method that is collected by the government from the business only once. This is why VAT is usually about 10 times higher than sales tax. VAT made sense when you could not collect tax from individual easily, today with PayPal, bank transfer, Payment Cards and heck even BitCoins it doesn't make sense any more. VAT means that the first consumer gets screwed the most this also means that consumers that buy mostly perishable goods or cannot afford to buy goods in a quick cycle get the highest tax burden. If you are from a low income family which means that most of your expenses go on food means that you pay an unreasonably higher tax rate than people spend most of their money on buying new Ipads. This also means that if you cannot buy an new Ipad every year and can only afford to buy one say every 3-4 years you get stuck with the entire burden from VAT vs some one who buys a new one and sells their old one every year rolls the VAT price on the person who bought the old one. What sales tax is is a small tax added to each transaction doesn't matter if you are buying a new product or not, it also means that every time you sell the product to some one else it keeps generating capital to the state. Also companies can't avoid paying sales TAX unlike VAT, and if your company owns a car and gives you it as a perk you have to pay value tax for it, basically it means that the taxable amount of your salary increases by a certain amount even tho you actual salary doesn't. On the supply chain, well first long supply chains are not good for the end consumer while monopolies are not good either you should not pay for the middle man, especially not for 50 of them. That said the sales tax is only paid for goods that are intend to be used. This means that if i buy nails from you as a vendor i do not pay sales tax because I'm not the end consumer, if i buy nails to make a furniture i pay it because I'm consuming it. The fact that the EU still uses VAT while pretending to spearhead the evolution of human society is still mind boggling.

by tomp 12y ago

dogma1138 12y ago

Because VAT is only "created" when a business sells you something, it's an archaic method that is collected by the government from the business only once. This is why VAT is usually about 10 times higher than sales tax. VAT made sense when you could not collect tax from individual easily, today with PayPal, bank transfer, Payment Cards and heck even BitCoins it doesn't make sense any more. VAT means that the first consumer gets screwed the most this also means that consumers that buy mostly perishable goods or cannot afford to buy goods in a quick cycle get the highest tax burden. If you are from a low income family which means that most of your expenses go on food means that you pay an unreasonably higher tax rate than people spend most of their money on buying new Ipads. This also means that if you cannot buy an new Ipad every year and can only afford to buy one say every 3-4 years you get stuck with the entire burden from VAT vs some one who buys a new one and sells their old one every year rolls the VAT price on the person who bought the old one. What sales tax is is a small tax added to each transaction doesn't matter if you are buying a new product or not, it also means that every time you sell the product to some one else it keeps generating capital to the state. Also companies can't avoid paying sales TAX unlike VAT, and if your company owns a car and gives you it as a perk you have to pay value tax for it, basically it means that the taxable amount of your salary increases by a certain amount even tho you actual salary doesn't. On the supply chain, well first long supply chains are not good for the end consumer while monopolies are not good either you should not pay for the middle man, especially not for 50 of them. That said the sales tax is only paid for goods that are intend to be used. This means that if i buy nails from you as a vendor i do not pay sales tax because I'm not the end consumer, if i buy nails to make a furniture i pay it because I'm consuming it. The fact that the EU still uses VAT while pretending to spearhead the evolution of human society is still mind boggling.