Posted by The Obama administration is starting to talk about the possibility of enacting a federal tax. While the knee jerk reaction is to say “OH NO”, if you look at it from the grand vision view it may be the best thing for us in the short term and long term. The short term benefits would push people to buy high priced items before the tax kicks in therefore having the effect of helping the economy. The long term benefits are great and many nations already have one in order to pay for socialized healthcare and to ward off companies and the rich from being able to dodge taxes. The overall effect that the Obama administration is striving for is for citizens to start saving more and think twice before buying items that they cannot afford. The immediate thing that people will jump to is that if the government imposes a federal tax then they need to eliminate another tax, hopefully the federal income tax. The Obama administration believes that with a federal tax on goods it would pull the U.S. out of a recession faster as the new tax would be able to leverage new programs and pay down the national debt. Time will tell on this issue as most people can barely afford food right now let alone a new tax.
Sound Off Portland do you think the new federal sales tax will help or hurt the U.S in the long term?
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I'd be perfectly happy with a national sales tax ONLY if we saw a reduction or elimination of other taxes. Sales taxes make sense to me because they are totally consumption based. If you want to pay less in taxes, consume less. If you are okay paying more, consume more. Its totally up to us.
The majority of a households expenses would not be taxable: rent/mortgage and unprepared food. So if you wanted to, you could theoretically pay next to nothing in federal tax if you didn't mind not consuming prepared goods.
It needs to be like in Europe, transparent, i.e. included in the price. I hate going to the checkout and having some percentage added on.
Are you truly that daft? Even a "transparent" tax is a resource removed from your set of tools to provide for you and those you care for. It's money taken from you. And if we are going to mirror the Europeans, we should prep for even more financial difficulties, since the world-wide recession is impacting them harder than us.
Remember when people spoke against increased government, increased world-wide aggression, increased taxation, and decrease in citizen rights? I guess that ended when we chose to "stimulate" the economy with failed economic paradigms, remove troops from Iraq only to send more into Pakistan and Afghanistan, tax and spend our way into record debt, and publicly decry the constitution and freedom of religion.
Damn! Don't you hate research, facts, history, logic, and common-sense…