How to defeat Bush's SS plan, soak the rich and give it to the poor.

[Ishmael]

Rob is a "one trick pony" fixated on real estate. (Kinda like LT in that respect.)

The real estate industry has been one of the greatest beneficiaries of government largess in one respect or another. As a matter of fact that largess is directly responsible for the savings and loan debacle of the late 70's and the IRS changes in the 80's upset the industry to no ends. But it adjusted and business went on as usual.

Rob seems to think the interest deduction for home owners (that's the only relevant home owners deduction pertinent to this discussion I can think of) is some how sacrosanct. But of what use is a deduction for interest payments from your income tax be in a world that has NO income tax??????? Is Rob of the mind that one should be reimbursed for monies never extorted?

Nor is he taking into consideration that those families/individuals living at, or below, the national poverty level wouldn't pay any taxes at all. A family of 4, regardless of income, would recieve a check each month for $352.66 (2003 poverty level threshold used for the calculation) based on an inclusive NST of 23%. Not one penny would be deducted from their paychecks either. If one of the individuals worked for 40 hours at $10/hr his/her paycheck would be for $400.00. Not one red cent deducted by the Federal Government.

The next questions would obviously be, "What about the people that line in __________ (Fill in any state with income tax here)?" The answer is simple. "Tough shit." If you've allowed your state to tax you into poverty, shame on you. It's a lot easier to change state law than federal law so this exposure of the states greed should go a long way to motivate some citizens to action.

Ishmael

 

[*******]

When you allow for the price-drop and than tack on state and national sales taxes (as well as local) at least for KANSAS and Misery, and I have shown the math previously, your widget still comes in at or under a dollar.

So with a 23% imbedded cost your widget goes to $.77

At 23% that's $.17 in tax or $.94

If you add an additional 7% for state and local (for a total of 30%) then you are at $.23 which make your widget cost one dollar.

The poor pay no taxes, get to purchase cheaper goods, and, and, and get a monthly prebate check, plus no taxes on used cars or homes and somehow this is a big payout to the rich? I don't see it...

 

[Ishmael]

When you allow for the price-drop and than tack on state and national sales taxes (as well as local) at least for KANSAS and Misery, and I have shown the math previously, your widget still comes in at or under a dollar.

So with a 23% imbedded cost your widget goes to $.77

At 23% that's $.17 in tax or $.94

If you add an additional 7% for state and local (for a total of 30%) then you are at $.23 which make your widget cost one dollar.

The poor pay no taxes, get to purchase cheaper goods, and, and, and get a monthly prebate check, plus no taxes on used cars or homes and somehow this is a big payout to the rich? I don't see it...

Have you noticed that it's generally the "rich" that bitch about it being a payout to the rich? Ever wonder why? Curious I'd say.

The states that do have income taxes will have immediate problems and you can expect the loudest cries from the state representatives from those states. They understand that they will now be fully exposed, saddled with the requirement to do their own income tracking without being able to piggy back off the feds. (Why does "piggy back" seem so apropos in this instance?) The citizens and businesses are going to get muy pissed, muy pronto.

Has anyone mentioned that even the unemployed and homeless will recieve a monthly check as well?

Ishmael

 

[*******]

GREAT last point!

Retirees will no longer be paying "income" tax on their retirment annuities and Social Security...

The rich, who spend more, will simply beiing paying more in taxes which is what Liberals and Social Welfare types want when they insist the income tax (our former flat-tax system) be graduated. So why not a voluntary garduated system in place of a coersive graduated system?

As Machaivelli has recently said over in another thread:

...but above all, he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony… Reasons for taking property are never lacking, and he who begins to live by stealing always finds a reason for taking what belongs to others.

AMEN. A-fawkin'-MEN! Pass the plate. I wanna buy a new truck...

 

[*******]

I could see local entities jacking up property taxes.

Property ownership.

Who are we kidding? Just a rental scheme...

But it's easier to make the fight locally, as you pointed out, than to do it nationally. A citizen can always move to a better, more cost-efficient community like the one I live in now. (It's a boom town! We are getting quarterly bonuses that just keep getting bigger and bigger as my wife's employer's profits shot through the roof.)

But I keep digressing in order to brag...

 

[Ishmael]

I could see local entities jacking up property taxes.

Property ownership.

Who are we kidding? Just a rental scheme...

But it's easier to make the fight locally, as you pointed out, than to do it nationally. A citizen can always move to a better, more cost-efficient community like the one I live in now. (It's a boom town! We are getting quarterly bonuses that just keep getting bigger and bigger as my wife's employer's profits shot through the roof.)

But I keep digressing in order to brag...

That you do. *chuckle*

All politics are local and best kept that way.

Tax structures should look like wedding cakes. The greatest portion should be local, next tier should be the state, and the Fed's get that little protion on the top. It seems we baked the cake upside down and forgot the pineapples.

Ishmael

 

[RobDownSouth]

I think all the numerical chicanery above avoids one salient point: the weasel words "tax inclusive" (or "embedded" using AJ's unique vocabulary).

If you buy a widget for $1.00 and your total bill with tax is $1.50, what is your tax rate?

If you are like most people, you'd say "50%".

But if you are Ishmael and AJ, you'd say "33% Tax inclusive!".

Huh?

Because Ish and AJ take the widget cost ($1.00) and divide it by the total cost ($1.50) and subtract that from 1 for the rate.

Is that legal to refer to the rate like that? Sure is.
Is that customary to refer to the rate like that? Hell no.
Is that intellectually dishonest? I'll leave that up to you to decide.

 

[*******]

Yeah, things like highway taxes piss me the fuck off because they are used not to improve roads as much as to coerce behaviors by withholding them.

It's the constant theft and coersion that make people so cynical towards the ever-expanding, ever intrusive Federal Government.

This sales tax would go a long ways towards getting people angry about government spending because with each and every sales receipt, they'd see how much they are being raped. Right now, our current system hides that amount and makes you think you are getting something from the government every Spring. By right, they should be paying US interest on the money they took and withheld from our pockets. I also like the pay as ou go nature of the system.

Plus at any point in time, since it's electronic, you would know what real tax revenues are and could balance them against real and budgeted expenditures and see how responsible the Congress is being. They could put the two numbers side by side on a website with real-time updates...

 

[*******]

I think all the numerical chicanery above avoids one salient point: the weasel words "tax inclusive" (or "embedded" using AJ's unique vocabulary).

If you buy a widget for $1.00 and your total bill with tax is $1.50, what is your tax rate?

If you are like most people, you'd say "50%".

But if you are Ishmael and AJ, you'd say "33% Tax inclusive!".

Huh?

Because Ish and AJ take the widget cost ($1.00) and divide it by the total cost ($1.50) and subtract that from 1 for the rate.

Is that legal to refer to the rate like that? Sure is.
Is that customary to refer to the rate like that? Hell no.
Is that intellectually dishonest? I'll leave that up to you to decide.

That is not how I get to my numbers Throb. First, you depreciate the hidden costs of taxation and compliance on the producer of goods and services, so the price of the widget drops. Now, we have seen several stipulate that most greedy evil corporations will simply not do that. But, even greedier evil corporations will undercut them on price, take the brutal nature of the airline industry, for example...

Then, and only then do you apply the sales tax. You are applying it first. But you are right, in that no one will buy the $1.00 widget at $1.50, especially when they can get it at $.77. It's why Walmart doesn't buy American. But, if you remove the tax burden from the manufacturer (which simply gets passed on to the consumer who actully pays the corporate taxes), he can then compete with the Chinese and rectify the imbalance in trade to a large degree.

And not one person has suggested that the National Sales Tax would be 50%. Not one.

 

[Ishmael]

I think all the numerical chicanery above avoids one salient point: the weasel words "tax inclusive" (or "embedded" using AJ's unique vocabulary).

If you buy a widget for $1.00 and your total bill with tax is $1.50, what is your tax rate?

If you are like most people, you'd say "50%".

But if you are Ishmael and AJ, you'd say "33% Tax inclusive!".

Huh?

Because Ish and AJ take the widget cost ($1.00) and divide it by the total cost ($1.50) and subtract that from 1 for the rate.

Is that legal to refer to the rate like that? Sure is.
Is that customary to refer to the rate like that? Hell no.
Is that intellectually dishonest? I'll leave that up to you to decide.

Mathmatically challenged Rob? *chuckle* Sales taxes are ALWAYS based on the price of the good or service.

So, a tax rate of 23% applied to a $75 item gives us a checkout cost of $92.25. If you reverse the computations you end up calculating what appears to be a tax rate of 28.7%. But like your supposition, that's the province of charlatans engaged in parlor tricks. The mathmatic equivalent of the "three card monte".

I suspect Rob is either a used car salesman or a fool.

Ishmael

 

[*******]

Damn it Ish.

The greatest impediment to change is that people don't trust it. As I learned in management they will come up with every objection under the sun to keep the familiar, no matter how inefficient. That is why you must talk to people and address their concerns and talk, talk, talk about it. That also involves listening and I am trying to listen to Throb and anybody else who are wary of this new idea.

Calling them a fool only forces them to entrench themselves into a position. You must give them the tools to reach new conclusions.

Work with me here. I know there is a natural antipathy here, but the challenge is to rise above it or you lose the battle because you lost the hearts and minds of those whom are needed to make the idea come about.

So I am willing to keep a near view of distanced things and a distanced view of near things as both Sun Tzu and Musashi have directed.

 

[Ishmael]

Damn it Ish.

The greatest impediment to change is that people don't trust it. As I learned in management they will come up with every objection under the sun to keep the familiar, no matter how inefficient. That is why you must talk to people and address their concerns and talk, talk, talk about it. That also involves listening and I am trying to listen to Throb and anybody else who are wary of this new idea.

Calling them a fool only forces them to entrench themselves into a position. You must give them the tools to reach new conclusions.

Work with me here. I know there is a natural antipathy here, but the challenge is to rise above it or you lose the battle because you lost the hearts and minds of those whom are needed to make the idea come about.

So I am willing to keep a near view of distanced things and a distanced view of near things as both Sun Tzu and Musashi have directed.

Yeah, I know what you're trying to do.

The problem is I suspect that Rob is somewhat smarter than the lies he's posted over and over again. If he's such a 'player' in real estate he should damn well know a reversed calculation when he see one. If he doesn't he's a fool, if he does he's purposely trying to pull the wool over someones eyes. If it had been almost any other poster they would have politely been shown the error in the calculation.

But I'll attempt to restrain myself in this thread only.

On the other hand, I expect him to be called down when he tries parlor tricks like he did in his last post.

Ishmael

 

[RobDownSouth]

Mathmatically challenged Rob? *chuckle* Sales taxes are ALWAYS based on the price of the good or service.

So, a tax rate of 23% applied to a $75 item gives us a checkout cost of $92.25. If you reverse the computations you end up calculating what appears to be a tax rate of 28.7%. But like your supposition, that's the province of charlatans engaged in parlor tricks. The mathmatic equivalent of the "three card monte".

I suspect Rob is either a used car salesman or a fool.

Ishmael

Simple either/or question here, mathmatically sic challenged one:

When you state the current state sales tax in your state of Florida, do you say it is

A) 6%?

or

B) "5.7% tax inclusive"


I rest my case here.

 

[*******]

Throb, for the life of me, I don't see what your point is. When I say that a widget will cost $.77 and then apply the tax, that is what I am saying. You seem to be saying that NO price will go down when the cost goes down so the National Sales tax will always be additive.

Is that correct? Is that what you are trying to say?

If you want to change my mind, I have to understand what you are saying and right now, I just don't.



Thank you Ish. I don't care what you say to anyone anywhere else in any other thread, nor will I try to stop you.

 

[Ishmael]

Simple either/or question here, mathmatically sic challenged one:

When you state the current state sales tax in your state of Florida, do you say it is

A) 6%?

or

B) "5.7% tax inclusive"


I rest my case here.

Still playing parlor tricks Rob?

It doesn't matter what I call it Rob. The only thing that matters is what I pay at the checkout.

Let's presume that the tax rate is going to be 25%, OK?

The product is priced at $100.00.

It's "tax inclusive" so what do I pay when I checkout?

Easy, I pay $100.00 because the tax was already "included" in the shelf price. What proportion of the price was tax?

$100 / 1.25 = 80
$100 - 80 = $20

So I paid $20 in taxes on a $100 purchase.

How do I check that?

$80 x .25 = 20
$80 + $20 = $100

So far, so good.

Now, how about 'tax exclusive'?

OK I take my $100 widget to the register and checkout.

$100 x 1.25 = $125.00

Or to level the playing field we'll say the shelf price is now $80 to reflect pre-tax price.

$80 x 1.25 = $100

We're still hanging in there.

But here's where the "parlor" tricks come in. Let's say I want to calculate what the ratio of product to tax was? Easy enough formula.

$80 (the 'cost' of the product) / $100 (the real price paid including the tax) = .8
1.0 - .8 = .2 (or 20%)

Opps!!!!!! What happened here? Where's the missing 5% Rob?

Now you too can amaze your friends and 'shuck the rubes'.

This does expose a down side to the NST being applied as 'tax inclusive' though. It's apparent that state sales tax will be applied to the shelf price that already has a tax applied to it. In other word you'll be paying a tax on a tax. But this is already true for an entire host of items you currently purchase anyway. Anything with a Federal Excise tax on it.

BTW Was it mentioned that HR 25 repeals ALL excise taxes? (Actually there's a part of that that I'm not all too happy about.)

Ishmael

 

[*******]

Which part and why?

You finally lost me on a topic that I thought I was up to speed on...

My fault for pretending to "think," eh hose?

 

[*******]

No, both taxes would be applied at the same time and then split out the way we currently do with state and city taxes.

I know. I had to fill out the paperwork...

 

[Ishmael]

Which part and why?

You finally lost me on a topic that I thought I was up to speed on...

My fault for pretending to "think," eh hose?

There is a 10% excise tax on all sporting goods. This money is 'earmarked' for conservation, public land improvement, and other projects related to the upkeep of the wilderness infrastructure (habitat improvement) and law enforcement related thereto. It has been one of the strongest levers outdoorsmen have had to keep the inner city, PC befuddled, 'never went in the wild other than a guided tour' eco-terrorists from shutting down access to public lands altogether. (Remember the hunting debacle concerning public lands under the Clinton administration?)

Everyones Ox takes a little goring under HR 25.

Ishmael

 

[*******]

That's the kind of divide and conquer thing that I've been talking about. Nobody minds a tax on someone else, so Congress behaves in a most cowardly fashion. Make them allot money to all these causes straight from general revenues in a more open and transparent manner because when people pay $25 on $100 and they actually "see" it for a change and then what it gets pissed away on (Like the Robert KKK Byrd scholarship he's currently fighting to maintain.), they're gonna get pissed. Mad as hell even...

 

[*******]

Like the current gasoline taxes which rape the poor and hurt the rich not one wit!

As you can plainly see, I am against "targeted" taxation in all its forms.

Violates "equal protection" to steal a favored phrase from the gay lobby.

 

[Ishmael]

No, both taxes would be applied at the same time and then split out the way we currently do with state and city taxes.

I know. I had to fill out the paperwork...

Not quite bro.

See HR 25 Title II Sec. 2.13.

'Tax Inclusive' means that the price advertised has already had the tax applied to the good or service.

That could change. HR 25 is still in the Ways and Means committee and is subject to change there. Further, if and when it's brought to the floor it will be subject to amendment. The same is true for the Senate version (S 1493)

Ishmael

 

[Ishmael]

That's the kind of divide and conquer thing that I've been talking about. Nobody minds a tax on someone else, so Congress behaves in a most cowardly fashion. Make them allot money to all these causes straight from general revenues in a more open and transparent manner because when people pay $25 on $100 and they actually "see" it for a change and then what it gets pissed away on (Like the Robert KKK Byrd scholarship he's currently fighting to maintain.), they're gonna get pissed. Mad as hell even...

I hear you, but the unique thing about the sporting goods tax was that it was the sportsmen that lobbied for it's passage. To the best of my knowledge it's the only tax enacted that was lobbied for by the very group that would be taxed. <shrug>

Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Ishmael

 

[*******]

I will write my Senators and Congressman because that is one thing I am opposed to. The citizen needs to be painfully aware of what his government and elected representatives are taking out of his pocket otherwise, I see less reason to fix the system because it is equally unaccountable.

I think I'll try to call into Neal and give him an earful too!

 

[*******]

I can't think of any other instances. Usually it's one group out to get another. In Misery they spend more on Conservation than roads. Go figure...

 

[Ishmael]

I will write my Senators and Congressman because that is one thing I am opposed to. The citizen needs to be painfully aware of what his government and elected representatives are taking out of his pocket otherwise, I see less reason to fix the system because it is equally unaccountable.

I think I'll try to call into Neal and give him an earful too!

I hear you but don't expect a lot of sympathy.

The reason it was done 'tax inclusive' was a bone to those states that rely on sales taxes. If the tax were to be made tax exclusive those states would see a precipitous decrease in tax revenues. Welcome to the world of real politik.

Ishmael