Obama's VAT Tax = Taxes On Our Profits on top of Income taxes?

Just came in to drop a link to mises.org...

The Origin of the Income Tax - Adam Young - Mises Institute

The article above a good synopsis regarding how the income tax evolved in the U.S. over the years.

Once people agree that it's fine to appropriate their private property - and that of their neighbors - as long as the need justifies the appropriation, the task then becomes to craft the need.

The problem is, who gets to decide which need is justified?

Income tax, capital gains tax, sales tax, VAT... it's all the same. The discussion should focus on repealing them, not replacing one for another, or lumping another on top of the growing heap.
 


it applies to services in all of EC. Certain services are except. Such as several specific [not all] bank or financial transactions.

If you are selling to customers (i.e. you aren't business to business), then your revenues will have VAT on them, but really you should pass this on to your customer (i.e. raise prices).
sounds so simple right?

in reality it means: every EC website has a 15~20% markup above every other website in a Google Search Query-- to the consumer; "for no apparent reason"

EU companies doing Intl. trade are essentially bottlenecked by whatever neighbour with the same product who does Not reside in EC.

VAT is a standard, mandatory, irremovable disadvantage to Modern International trade.

On the other hand, someone with no social restrictions can seize tremendous market cap in regions where VAT is imposed, by simply taking another citizenship and then continuing to offer the same services, while all of his competitors suffer a 15-20% Binding Government-Imposed handicap to international trade!!

note: people will NOT be happy if someone decides to do the latter. 15-20% means a lot to, to many businesses. in certain industries, 10% is the entire profit line. One smart guy renouncing citizenship and continuing his business 3 countries down can literally leave a spree of bankruptcy in his former state due to a 15-20% flat cut price advantage. People will want to see you Dead......... Seriously.

But yeah. that's EC and VAT.

PS: most of this is, assuming a business operates International. or...... is "made international" the day one competitor stands up and Changes Flags :)
 
PPS: taking another citizenship to no longer be held accountable by nation A's irs. now just paying taxes as a citizen of nation B. putting company names and accounts in B while physically living and spending in A [aka offshore banking/bank secrecy] = dead. so it's not even worth exploring that option. true tax evasion anno 2010 = Move your Ass.

excuse the doublepost.
 
most 1st world countries seem to have more taxes than US until now.
doesn't seem to help people getting taxed more but will it help the economy?

and now a word from our sponsor
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKukOSBybyw]YouTube - "Living in America" by James Brown[/ame]
 
Basically, if you are a business it shouldn't affect you.

If your ad spend has VAT on it (second scenario), you can claim it back from the government once you've paid it.

If you are selling to customers (i.e. you aren't business to business), then your revenues will have VAT on them, but really you should pass this on to your customer (i.e. raise prices).

I think VAT would have massive inflationary effects if introduced.

of course it affects you, if your customers prices go up they are less inclined to buy...

not to mention your 2nd sentence basically equates to loaning more interest-free money to the government out of my pocket
 
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disappointed :(
 
i think saying that it'll lead to serfdom and slavery is just silly hyperbole, but it's no secret that the both parties seek to control people in different ways (in order to simply consolidate power and wealth, this isnt some alex jones bullshit tirade).

it just happens that democrats try to do it by increasing people's dependence on big government, which works especially well for those that are lower middle class or poor.
 
I'm with lotsofzeros on this - existing taxes are almost never removed.

Also in the UK the VAT rate was supposed to be fixed and never increased. It's increased at least 3 times and is now about 17.5% I think (I left the UK 6 years ago).

As I recall it was supposed to "pay for the war recovery" or some such crap. Still around though.

I can pretty much guarantee you that if VAT is introduced in the US you will STILL have income taxes - just like the UK.

The real aim of VAT is to try and suck tax out of the "black" market. Even if you're working on the sly and paying no taxes directly, you end up paying taxes whenever you buy anything.

I'm a libertarian and consider all forms of "tax" to be a fancy word for theft, jus' so you know.

The idea that VAT reduces government's paperwork is great - except it increases the paperwork of the productive members of society instead. And yep, you still pay income tax.

You know, for the "services" they shove down your throat at gunpoint...



AC

But if you analyse income tax against VAT for all countries in Europe, you realise that whilst the UK has much higher VAT rates, it also has lower income tax. (on average)
 
btw, exact example of what i tried to illustrate:

g2play - Google Search

People all over Europe are foaming out of their mouth to have G2play shut down. They attempt all kinds of action, threats and boycotts.

But in the end no one can do anything. Because G2play are not EC citizens nor an EC company. They are accountable to Malaysian law and tax only. But with today's internet, even people from Malaysia can launch a Western enterprise by just registering the appropriate .com

In the meanwhile, any Western company that gets caught up with G2play on a top10 Google serp for any product..... might as well just pack their bags. Or begin threatening legal ... and sometimes not so legal, action. Because G2play operates on competitive pricing, and most of all, NO VAT. Even if a EC company wanted to compete on price, the final 15~20% bottleneck is not formed by Market competition, but by their own irs!!

G2play is a Core example of my post.
 
But if you analyse income tax against VAT for all countries in Europe, you realise that whilst the UK has much higher VAT rates, it also has lower income tax. (on average)

Perhaps, but then add in "National Insurance" tax. Not sure how things are now but over the years they'd juggle between those two, with the classic "one hand giveth..." approach. Fact is, you end up losing around 1/3 (33%) of your income, then pay another 17.5% on top for the pleasure of spending it.

That's for a normal worker, not a high earner.

Also, talking of europe, note just how far down the bunny-hole of debt the UK government now is?

Whereas other european countries have hideous debt levels, usually over 100% of GDP, some at 200%, Britain leads the lot at around 1000% of GDP.

When I moved to Malaysia 6 years ago the pound sterling was worth 6.80 ringgit. Today it's more like 4.70 ringgit. The pound is being crushed by nu-labor printing presses.

And inflation is a tax everyone pays.



AC
 
Just came in to drop a link to mises.org...

The Origin of the Income Tax - Adam Young - Mises Institute

...

Once people agree that it's fine to appropriate their private property - and that of their neighbors - as long as the need justifies the appropriation, the task then becomes to craft the need.

The problem is, who gets to decide which need is justified?

Income tax, capital gains tax, sales tax, VAT... it's all the same. The discussion should focus on repealing them, not replacing one for another, or lumping another on top of the growing heap.

If only more people understood this...
 
As I recall it was supposed to "pay for the war recovery" or some such crap. Still around though.

ah, you mean like income tax in the US..

In order to help pay for its war effort in the American Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800)[8]. This tax was repealed and replaced by another income tax in 1862.[9]
In 1894, Democrats in Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman tariff, which imposed the first peacetime income tax. The rate was 2% on income over $4000, which meant fewer than 10% of households would pay any. The purpose of the income tax was to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions

Income tax in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia