Why Does Mitt Romney Pay Lower Taxes Than His Secretary?

[jim hardy]

OK. How about this?

At first glance it seems a step in the right direction. It taxes expenditure. It'd bring some reason to Wall Street "High Frequency Trading" which IMHO is an abusive practice.

What about cash transactions ? I don't favor "cashless economy" .

 

[SW VandeCarr]

At first glance it seems a step in the right direction. It taxes expenditure. It'd bring some reason to Wall Street "High Frequency Trading" which IMHO is an abusive practice.

What about cash transactions ? I don't favor "cashless economy" .

Cash is a small part of the money supply even now, and the trend is toward an essentially cashless economy. However, for a tax like this, cash transactions hardly matter unless you're talking about organized crime levels of transactions. If you're stopped by police with a wad of hundred dollar bills, they can legally confiscate it without a warrant or charges. The Fed will reduce currency in favor of M2, etc. Banks will charge extra for cash transactions. Besides, the APTT will be a federal tax. The states will still have their taxes, including retail sales taxes which dwarf the APTT.

The APTT lightly touches the middle class. For a family with a $60,000 income, it's hard to see how they could be taxed more than a $1000 in a year unless they're raiding their savings or taking out big loans. The APTT is highly skewed toward the wealthy, but I have a hard time seeing how it could produce the revenue claimed. A 0.35% tax on securities transactions (stocks, bonds) is huge. Talk about capital flight! Switzerland barely gets away with a 0.01% tax on securities transactions alone. Theoretically speaking , the base for the APTT is said to be 50-100 times GDP depending on the size of the financial industry realtive to the whole economy. Taking the US GDP at $18T multiplied by 50 you get 900T and this is based on old data. Fully evalutaing the current level of securities and bank transactions might be as high as $3 quadrillion (Qd)! Reading about it, I get the idea no one really knows. It's surely true that 0.35% is not feasible unless securities transactions are exluded, let alone HFT (which will be eliminated by any APTT), and without the stock and bond markets I have no idea where all this potential is.

IMHO I think some kind of an APTT may have a place, and it can reduce other taxes. It's a consumption tax, although a progressive one, and IMO needs to be balanced by an income tax, albeit at lower rates. I wouldn't object to a flat income tax, say 13-15% tax paired with some kind of APTT. There would need to be deductions for federal and state antipoverty programs. (I just thought I'd throw that in).

www.researchgate.net/']www.researchgate.net/...Taxation...(APT)_tax/.../0912f50572c3690e8e0.[/PLAIN]

There doesn't seem to be any links for this, but it's the best discussion I've found. There are plenty of other APT tax URLs of lower quality.

 

[jim hardy]

If you're stopped by police with a wad of hundred dollar bills, they can legally confiscate it without a warrant or charges.

Has that been to supreme court yet ?

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Has that been to supreme court yet ?

Jeez! I wrote that whole thing and that's what you picked up on? I don't know, but RICO has past muster and I think this stuff has been justified by the RICO statutes. I really don't want to go off topic with this but it's a license to steal. Many innocent people have been victimized. Here, you're guilty until proven innocent. Start another thread if you want and I'll contribute. Please no more posts about this in this thread.

 

[jim hardy]

Well i'd like to see something like the APTT replace the personal income tax, not accompany it.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Well i'd like to see something like the APTT replace the personal income tax, not accompany it.

So would I. It has many good attributes. It has a broad base and a low rate. It can be fully automated and easily administered. It's progressive, and largely painless unless you're heavily involved in securies trading or doing very large transactions. We could do away with the IRS, although Treasury agents would need be on the lookout for large cash transactions. However, what is the optimal rate that doesn't disrupt the markets but still brings enough revenue? The boosters of this tax say it can replace the income tax, estate tax and others. They say the optimal rate is 0.35%, but if you read their literature, they talk about a decline in trading volume from 25 to 50%. No one knows the potential of this tax. The few transaction taxes that have been used are an order of magnitude smaller, and 0.01% will not bring enough revenue.