Obama suggests value-added tax may be an option

WillowTree

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Sep 15, 2008
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President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."

After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery."

For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT

Obama suggests value-added tax may be an option
 
President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."

After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery."

For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT

Obama suggests value-added tax may be an option

Who's surprised here? I'm not.

Barry Soetoro has to pay for his big ticket, government expansion, giveaway programs somehow. So, why not just finish taxing us all to death...including those low income folks he claims he wants to help.

Sheyeah.....right. Help my ass. :rolleyes:
 
VAT, carbon tax, tax on banks.tax on investments... But, but, but that won't affect 95 percent right? Liar.

Think of the power to be able to raise the VAT at any time they please. A never ending source of pork...Scary.
 
President Barack Obama suggested Wednesday that a new value-added tax on Americans is still on the table, seeming to show more openness to the idea than his aides have expressed in recent days.

Before deciding what revenue options are best for dealing with the deficit and the economy, Obama said in an interview with CNBC, "I want to get a better picture of what our options are."

After Obama adviser Paul Volcker recently raised the prospect of a value-added tax, or VAT, the Senate voted 85-13 last week for a nonbinding "sense of the Senate" resolution that calls the such a tax "a massive tax increase that will cripple families on fixed income and only further push back America's economic recovery."

For days, White House spokesmen have said the president has not proposed and is not considering a VAT

Obama suggests value-added tax may be an option

:lol::lol::lol:

Might have thought of that BEFORE he started taking over private industry, selling us to China a signing a healthcare bill that was f-d up and required fixes before signed it.

What a rube.
 
And how will that affect the people making less than $250K....$200K....$150K?

Note how they keep defining down the levels of income for The Rich.
 
Didnt he claim he was against just hours ago?

Didn't he also make a campaign promise not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000/year?

Oh wait! His first act as President proved that was a lie when he raised cigarette taxes.

Immie



Obama Lied - and Fiscal Solvency Died.
 
C'mon Libs....let's hear you praise this guy and defend him on this....What a joke, this President is thinking
about doing this,He can't wait to put this into play in order to weaken the populace even further.Do you see him in any hurry whatsoever to get people working again?....of course not.When he gets his hands on even more of our money it still wont be enough,he will spend his way through this as well and then go looking for more.
 
A VAT is one of the most efficient taxes.

But I can't see it. I don't think it would get through Congress.

I'd rather see them cut spending.
This congress?

it would be a slam dunk.

Queen Nan has been talking about it for 4 years.
 
A VAT is one of the most efficient taxes.

But I can't see it. I don't think it would get through Congress.

I'd rather see them cut spending.


Efficient?

It's a bureaucratic nightmare designed to provide full employment to hordes of government employees who decide which products deserve to be exempt from VAT and which will be punished with it.

If they really wanted to be efficient, they would cut spending.
 
A VAT is not paid (directly) by any individual. It is a tax on the value added by each stage of production. Sale of potatoes to processing plant = taxable event. Sale of chips to bagging plant = taxable event. Sale of bagged chips to distributor = taxable event. Canada uses a VAT, as do many European nations.

Of course, each taxpayer in the production line passes along his VAT costs, so the ultimate consumer pays a sort of hidden national sales tax. And like any sales tax, a VAT is regressive, meaning those with the least income pay the highest percent of income to it. For 2008/2009, Canadian revenues from its VAT (also called the Goods and Services Tax, or GST) was about 11%.

http://http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr-rfa/2009/afr-rfa09_1-eng.asp#revenues

For this same time period, US tax revenues included about 7% for excise and other taxes. Corporate income taxes accounted for only 12% of American tax revenues, almost exactly what they were in Canada.

http://http://www.fin.gc.ca/afr-rfa/2009/afr-rfa09_1-eng.asp#revenues

Both nations derive about 50% of their revenues from taxes on personal income.

If taxes must be raised in the US, many pundits agree a VAT is superior to a climb in the rates of personal income tax. Others reasonably argue it is not, mainly because it is viewed as regressive. Traditionally, however, changes in personal income tax rates was the preferred, primary means of raising more American taxes.
 
A VAT is one of the most efficient taxes.

But I can't see it. I don't think it would get through Congress.

I'd rather see them cut spending.


Efficient?

It's a bureaucratic nightmare designed to provide full employment to hordes of government employees who decide which products deserve to be exempt from VAT and which will be punished with it.

If they really wanted to be efficient, they would cut spending.

This congress would love to add a VAT along with increasing Income taxes and Increasing spending.
 
A VAT is one of the most efficient taxes.

But I can't see it. I don't think it would get through Congress.

I'd rather see them cut spending.


Efficient?

It's a bureaucratic nightmare designed to provide full employment to hordes of government employees who decide which products deserve to be exempt from VAT and which will be punished with it.

If they really wanted to be efficient, they would cut spending.

As a tax, a broad based consumption tax is very efficient because it does not discriminate between economic transactions nor skews the allocation of resources.

Many conservatives argue for a VAT over an income tax for this reason.

A few years ago, I concluded that the magnitude of our looming fiscal problem was so enormous that higher taxes were inevitable--and that was long before the recent crisis made matters vastly worse. Moreover, I concluded that the magnitude of this tax increase is so great that it would seriously cripple the economy if accomplished through higher rates on an already dysfunctional income tax system. Reluctantly, I concluded that a value-added tax (VAT) is the best way to raise the revenue that would, in any case, be raised.

When I first made this suggestion in a Los Angeles Times article in 2004, I was building on a large body of tax analysis showing that the VAT is the best known way of raising revenue. When I say "best" I mean that it raises large revenues from low rates and has minimal disincentive effects. In economists' speak, it has a very small dead weight or welfare cost--the economic output lost by the tax over and above the revenue collected.

... Back in the early 1980s, practically every leading conservative economist supported a VAT for the United States. Norman Ture, one of the godfathers of supply-side economics, and Murray Weidenbaum, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan, wrote many articles, books and papers supporting the VAT. The conservative American Enterprise Institute published a book in 1987 saying that the VAT was the key to deficit reduction.

Perhaps the strongest evidence that the VAT was considered the conservative tax reform is that it is the foundation of the flat tax, which is still supported by practically every serious conservative tax reformer.

... [A flat tax] is not the only case of conservatives supporting a VAT when it suited them to do so. Back in 1992, former California Gov. Jerry Brown proposed a VAT plus a flat rate income tax and this was widely hailed by supply-side economists such as Arthur Laffer and Gary Robbins. More recently, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., introduced legislation (S. 1240) to establish a business consumption tax that is, in essence, a VAT.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/22/republicans-value-added-tax-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html
 
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