quote:
Nope.

You still have payroll tax that many businesses get behind on and would also get behind on paying the consumption tax. As a matter of fact… you would be floored at how many businesses have trouble… or not at all… forwarding the money withheld from paychecks to the government.

Would it shrink it? Yes. But eliminate it? I don’t see how that can even be done now.

Why would there be a payroll tax? A consumption tax can be broadly applied and displace all income-type taxation, including payroll taxes.

The IRS is the lion's share of the Treasury budget. Treasury shows a $20B budget, iirc, and about $15B goes to the IRS. If we got rid of the IRS we'd pay about $5B per year in retirement costs, assuming all employees were retired. Eventually that would go to zero. IRS is now between 90k and 100k employees. Dedicate $1B to send to the states, which is an average of $20M per state. That's plenty for offices and 100+ employees to oversee collection of the consumption tax. That would shut down the IRS and save us $9B or more each year from the Treasury budget.

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Posted by CleverUserName

Member since Oct 2016

12928 posts

Posted on 4/12/24 at 9:04 am to POTUS2024

quote:
Why would there be a payroll tax? A consumption tax can be broadly applied and displace all income-type taxation, including payroll taxes.

Because of how it’s collected.

The business is the middle man in the transaction. For example, many people have no clue how sales tax is collected. It’s not magically sent to the state when the POS device or cash register rings you up, it’s accounted for and sent to the state by the business.

And what about cash transactions? They would be scrutinizing those for proper withholding of the tax.

And like it or not… there are deadbeat businesses out there that will keep the money instead of forwarding it over when they fail to keep accounting records right or use the cash to keep the business afloat. Happens now all the time with payroll taxes. All the time. There are literally billions of dollars out there right now in unpaid and delinquent payroll taxes alone. I have to work with the IRS and clients constantly about getting them square on their payroll tax debt when they don’t make their correct deposits. Consumption taxes would be no different.

This post was edited on 4/12/24 at 9:07 am

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