You are ignoring a few things about the fair tax. First, every taxpayer would keep 100 percent of their income. Second, the tax is only on new goods. One can avoid tax all together by buying used goods. Third, every taxpayer gets a check from the govt each month to cover necessities. Fourth, built in taxes and comliance costs account for about 23-25 percent of all goods. That is simply replaced by the fair tax. Competition will drive prices down further. I can go on and on.
Which all gets down to your seeing the current system as unfair but not being willing to admit that your proposed alternative is unfair to somebody else.
Look, twit, I'm against all forms of taxation. I don't see HR25 as being any real improvement over what we've got--soak the rich, soak the poor, soak the middle class, soak the French, no matter how you structure it somebody gets soaked.
No, they wouldn't. The portion of the purchase price of goods that goes to the government comes out of their income.
I have quite a lot of used food that I'd be happy to sell you.
Actually, they get a check equal to the tax rate times the poverty level. If that "covers necessities" then the poverty level would seem to be a bit high.
Huh? What "built in taxes and compliance costs" would be replaced?
Graduated tax in our system is not very well graduated though. Too many ways around the tax. Eliminate the various deductions and then it may become fair. You could have then a combination where income dictates the percentage, not a lot of hocus-pocus from Squirrley Accounting Partners LLC .
Two problems with a simple flat tax. We don't need accountant to prepare the forms. We don't need lawyers do defend the accountants deductions.
The burden may then fall where it should, on the people that want a particular service. We all want an army to protect us, good highways to drive on, but we don't need a lot of silly mandates, pork barrel projects, and employees in postions because of friends in high places. There can be billions in cuts and no honest citizen would miss the service.
Your premise is wrong, therefore your conclusions are flawed:
Your implict assumption is that there is nothing that can be done about "the poor" - that poverty is a societal constant both in fact and numbers. This is flatly refuted by the last 200+ years of Western society wherein the per capita poverty rates have been steadily falling as a direct result of Capital Markets, Industrialization, and Personal Liberty.
There are two kinds of poor people: the Intentional Poor - people whose poverty is a direct consquence of their ongoing bad choices and behavior, and the Unintentional Poor - people whose poverty is a matter of circumstance, not their actions. The Intentional Poor remain so generation after generation, and I couldn't care less about them - they get what they deserve. The Unintentional Poor move up and out of poverty, given any reasonable opportunity to do so.
If the tax structure quit punishing the most productive and wealthy members of society - say with a flat sales tax coupled with mandatory balanced bugets and a significant reduction in goverment spending - there would be a non-inflationary economic boom the likes of which have not been seen since the Industrial Revolution. Productive/wealthy people either create new businesses, invest the money, spend the money, or save it. In all these cases, there is a net increase in private sector growth which leads to new jobs and wealth creation ... all of which benefits the Unintentional Poor (nothing will help the Intentional Poor, nor do we have any moral obligation to even bother trying - they are getting precisely what they've earned).
The money being peed away by the various Government Swine (and their pigglet constituents that feed at the trough) is gutting economic growth. The rate of government expenditure is growing a significantly greater rate than the rate of overall economic growth
formatting link
- i.e., The percentage of the GDP absorbed by Government is growing. (At the current rate, the day will come when the Government consumes the entire GDP - we'll all be working for the Political Hacks.)
This means that money that would be productively used to create new businesses, wealth, and *jobs* is, instead, consumed by a Leviathan Government, which produces almost nothing useful other than getting incompetent nitwits and alcoholics off the unemployment lines and sending them to Congress instead. These missing jobs are the jobs that the Unintentional Poor can't get. There is surely no greater punishment for the poor than a growing and intrusive government.
In my experience, people who bleat about the plight of the poor, a) Have never themselves experienced poverty, and b) Almost never actually care all that much about people in poverty - they're just such a charming cause to take up in the name of what is "progressive and right" while soiling the liberty of everyone else...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk snipped-for-privacy@tundraware.com PGP Key:
I really didn't see much difference in the interface between TaxCut and TurboTax on the paid version. It's set up with the same kind of interview interface to enter the data. It also has tabbed indices to various elements of the program.
For quite some time, I used Lotus 1-2-3 worksheets for my finances. I pretty much use QuickBooks as an electronic equivalent of paper records, it just does all the legwork and makes keeping track of accounts easy. I do the real transfers among various accounts the old-fashioned way, I write a paper check, same with paying bills.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety Army General Richard Cody
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:58:22 -0700, Fly-by-Night CC wrote:
Several years ago, Intuit decided that too many people were "sharing" their TurboTax program and instituted an activation scheme to assure that only the original purchaser was able to use the program. On the face of it,that doesn't sound unreasonable. However, Intuit's approach was heavy-handed and ill-conceived. First, they chose an activation engine that had been identified by many experts in the community to be more than just a license manager, it had also been associated with various spy-ware activities. In addition, this license manager ran all the time, not just when Turbo-Tax was activated, and IIRC, remained installed on one's system even after one had uninstalled TurboTax -- you had to also deliberately uninstall the activation manager ( that really wasn't spyware, trust us) by itself. Next, Intuit support essentially leveled accusations of thievery against anyone who had installation issues and dared disturb technical support. There were several problems. Because of the activation scheme chosen, a major reconfiguration of one's machine could flag it to the activation software as a "different machine" and thus disable one's legal copy. Upgrading one's computer during tax season could result in a similar problem, with TT being disabled. Finally, many people would do their taxes on one machine, then copy the data file to disk and install TT on another machine (for example, at work) in order to print the forms because the printers were better at the second location, but the first location was more convenient for actually filling out the forms. This activation scheme precluded the ability to do that, despite the fact that this was a reasonable, fair use of the software. Other concerns raised were problems if one was audited in the future and you had a new computer (I believe that Intuit addressed that concern by de-activating the activation requirement and unlocking the software after October something of the tax year, so this wasn't as big an issue).
As far as the "sunsetting" issue, Intuit has decided that after April of this year, all previous versions of Quicken will no longer be supported, and only Quicken 2005 will be the supported. They are forcing this upgrade by disabling the bill pay and online banking format that was present in prior versions and implementing a new interface to banks. For a really good description of the changes, check out: .
From that article: "OK, the above is not precisely what the letter Quicken 2001 and Quicken
2002 customers started receiving last week said. I think it captures the spirit, though. What the letter does say is that, under Intuit's ever-changing , users of these two products have until April 19th to upgrade to Quicken 2005 if they wish to continue on-line banking. Thus features that were essential to many customers choosing to buy Quicken in the first place -- such as downloading account data from their financial institutions, on-line bill pay, and getting stock quotes -- are essentially being turned off for users of the 2001 and 2002 versions.
"They're doing it again," wrote one angry reader. "I just received a letter from Intuit advising that my Quicken 2002 will no longer work with any on-line features, including on-line banking. I've seen Quicken 2005 on some client systems. I hate it. It's replete with advertising and sales promos, and much of the old control-key functionality has gone away, too. I can't help but feel they really have us by the proverbial short hairs, because any realistic alternatives are more trouble than they are worth."
Further in the article, it mentions that some of the features present in one grade of Quicken are no longer there, but are now only present in the next higher grade. (for example, some features that were present in the standard version are now only available in the deluxe version -- thus the "lobotomized" comment).
A subsequent article pointed out that if you were using Turbotax, you either had to upgrade to the newer version or go through additional steps to first export your records from the sunsetted version in a different format, then import it to turbotax from that new format.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The absence of accidents does not mean the presence of safety Army General Richard Cody
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Thanks Mark for taking the time to respond so fully - I had no idea. (I used Quicken 98(?) on an old mac and just recently got a new mac with Q'05 preinstalled. Since I don't do online banking will these Intuit tactics haunt me as well?
The corporate income tax is a complete fiction. Corporations do not, and never have, paid income tax. Their *customers* pay it. The corporate income tax, and the cost of preparing and it (and, trust me, that's huge), are simply costs of doing business, just like salaries or raw materials, and are incorporated into the prices of the products.
He said competition will drive down price.
If the corporate income tax disappears, every corporation's cost of doing business will drop dramatically. This in turn enables them to significantly lower the prices of their goods or services, and remain profitable. The first one in any particular market sector to do this will obtain a tremendous competitive advantage, and the others will be forced to follow suit.
For example, how many people are going to eat at McDonalds if a Big Mac costs a dollar, but Burger King is selling Whoppers for 75 cents? If Shell is selling gasoline for $1.75 a gallon, who's going to pay the Marathon across the street $2.25?
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
They do the same thing with Quickbooks. After a couple years they stop supporting it AND, worst of all, won't support the payroll tax updates leaving you swinging in the breeze if you have a payroll. Then too now that they've figured out a way to force you to buy the tax updates they charge either $130 or $160 per year for it. If you don't buy it, you can't use the payroll function and have to do everything manually which, naturally, they no longer explain how to do.
I dumped Turbo Tax for the reasons given a couple of years ago and went to Tax Cut. Happy with that program.
What I'd love to do is take some of the geniuses from Intuit out behind the shop with a nice oak 2x2 for about ten minutes.
Been 5 years or so since I last used T-Tax so don't recall precisely the interface (of course, it could be totally different now, anyway). What I didn't like wrt TaxCut was the insistence on building duplicates for all forms or using the "supporting document" form and not being able to simply transfer balances into appropriate fields w/o the repetitive "don't do this!" warnings and all...I don't recall it being that difficult w/ T-Tax. I only use these for estimates and double-checking the accountant for sanity, so I'm definitely not their target audience...there was, as noted, at least one missing form/schedule that would have prevented a final filing anyway w/o at least the paid version. Overall, I'd give them credit for a functional program, just somewhat more clunky to use than I'd prefer...
...
To a point, I'm in synch w/ you here...but, for the farm after trying for some time it seems far more complex to set up all the sub-accounts in QB and to enter the detail there than it is to simply use the paper ledgers...mostly because they're already preprinted and the accounting package uses them (and the accountant does remote data entry :) ). For the consulting side of the business QB works much better although I've migrated away from it there as well as there's no way to set up progress invoices in the manner my principal client requires and w/o that there's little additional benefit...consequently I've gone to an Excel spreadsheet as it allows me easier interface w/ the project manager (sugar daddy) there since they've semi-automated the proposal process using a template they supply.
Just a case of one size doesn't fit all for the most part...
And therein you unwittingly point out the rub...it's a temporary advantage and the long-term competitive position isn't changed--just reset at a differing level and the cost passed along in a differing guise.
Since I don't agree that just because I can make more money than somebody else I should be penalized by higher taxation of my income so......
Just a thought, what if tax on purchases were progressive as prices increased?
e.g., a $20K car has a 5% tax, a $25K car has 6% and keeps going up a percent per $5K. Then the wealthy end up paying more in taxes than the not so wealthy. If you don't like the taxes, don't buy it or buy a lesser costing item.
Of course, this would get complicated when applied to different things such as food (should be exempt from tax) and clothing but could still work as the cost of a clothing item increases, so does the tax. The poverty level kids don't need a $150 pair of Nikes anyway (and neither do most people).
No more income tax, just a progessive use tax. It taxes the wealthy more but only if they want to pay for it.
Gary (just another idea that sure to tick off someone!)
I'm all for cutting taxes and the cost of government.
The one thing everybody forgets is that for every cut, one or more workers will need to be laid off. Cutting 10s or 100s of thousands of workers from the government or government contracotr payrolls is going to cost our economy a lot until the economy can absorb all these unemployed people.
So what? The point is not to alter the competitive position, the point is to lower the cost of doing business for corporations, and thereby lower the cost of their products.
What cost are you talking about? Eliminating the corporate income tax
*eliminates* a cost of doing business. It doesn't just shift that cost somewhere else - that cost *disappears*.
If you think that corporations actually pay income taxes, either you haven't thought it all the way through, or you're very naive. It's just another cost of doing business, and is passed along to customers just like every other cost of doing business. Corporations do not pay corporate income taxes, never have, and never will. Those taxes are paid by their customers in the form of higher prices. The only role of the corporation is to collect that tax from the customers, and forward it to the government.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
Actually, I think it's a grand idea. The tax code is already structured to implement various forms of social policy deemed to be for the benefit of everyone (e.g. it encourages the traditional family [married parents, one wage-earner] and home ownership). Such purposes can be IMO much more finely tuned with a sales tax or VAT than they can with an income tax, e.g.
- high taxes on Big Macs, but low (or no) taxes on fruits and vegetables
- modest tax on a basic Ford or Chevy, higher on a Caddy, whack the Beemers
- no tax on Levis or Wranglers, sky-high taxes on Calvin Kleins
- no tax on ground beef in the grocery, tax on a hamburger in a restaurant
- no tax on ground beef, modest tax on a sirloin, high tax on a filet mignon or whatever.
Wrangling over what to tax and what not to tax will provide employment for all the suddenly unemployed tax accountants and lawyers, too.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
Nonsense. That cost will be more than amply offset by removing the burden of government from the backs of businesses and individuals everywhere. The logical conclusion of your argument is that we'd be better off if we *all* worked for the government. I hope you see that's absurd.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
Nobody ever left footprints in the sands of time by sitting on his butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.