{"id":1767,"date":"2010-04-08T19:38:08","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T19:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1767"},"modified":"2010-04-08T19:38:08","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T19:38:08","slug":"the_coming_vat_tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1767","title":{"rendered":"The Coming VAT Tax"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, Daniel Mitchell, a Cato Institute senior fellow, posted an article at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/p\/news\/opinion\/opedcolumnists\/vat_attack_RUxBOS7fspwKRdjNiWpXyO\">New York Post<\/a>&nbsp;about Paul Volker&#8217;s comments recently on the possibility of instituting a VAT (Value Added Tax).&nbsp;&nbsp; Mr. Mitchell points out that a VAT will turn America into a slow-growth, European-style economy, rather than the dynamic economy we are accustomed to.&nbsp; He points out that the proper way to grow the economy would be to reverse the explosion of government spending.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>A VAT tax is rather simple to institute&#8211;a tax is added to an item at every stage of the manufacturing process.&nbsp; Mr. Mitchell uses the manufacture of furniture as an example.&nbsp; A VAT would be imposed when the&nbsp;raw timber&nbsp;is sold; again when the sawmill produces lumber; again when the manufacturer builds the chair; a tax at the wholesale level, and a tax when the chair is sold to the consumer.&nbsp; To avoid duplicate tax paying, each level of taxpayer is given credit for the previous payment, thus theoretically charging the consumer only the basic sales tax.&nbsp; However, a tax was paid at every level of &#8216;value added&#8217;.&nbsp; Doesn&#8217;t it follow that the businesses who pay that tax at every level will pass those costs on to the eventual consumer&#8211;thus increasing the price of every product you buy?&nbsp; You won&#8217;t see a VAT tax&#8211;you will just notice that the price of everything went up abruptly.<\/p>\n<p>The advantage of the VAT would be that<strong><font style=\"FONT-SIZE: 1.25em\"> if <\/font><\/strong>you used it to replace the income tax, it would save all of us a whole lot of paperwork and aggravation!&nbsp;&nbsp; Unfortunately, Congress is looking at the VAT tax as something to add in addition to the income tax.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Mr. Mitchell concludes:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p style=\"LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><i style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal\"><span style=\"COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial\"><font face=\"Calibri\">&#8220;Today&#8217;s income-tax system is a nightmarish combination of class warfare and corrupt loopholes. But adding a VAT solves none of those problems, it merely gives politicians more money to spend and a chance to auction off a new set of tax breaks to interest groups. That&#8217;s good for Washington, but bad for America.&#8221; <\/font><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"LINE-HEIGHT: normal; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\" class=\"MsoNormal\"><i style=\"mso-bidi-font-style: normal\"><span style=\"COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/font><\/span><\/i>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What we need in Washington is not another tax to pay for the increased spending.&nbsp; We need more of our money and less spending.&nbsp; Please remember that in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, Daniel Mitchell, a Cato Institute senior fellow, posted an article at the New York Post&nbsp;about Paul Volker&#8217;s comments recently on the possibility of instituting a VAT (Value Added Tax).&nbsp;&nbsp; Mr. Mitchell points out that a VAT will turn America &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=1767\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}