Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The US could always do what virtually every other country in the world does: have a single, national, rate of sales tax, which everybody pays on all transactions. It really does make things an awful lot simpler and would massively reduce the huge use tax fraud (because it would eliminate use tax).
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Yeah.
That would fly.
Like a lead balloon.
The US has a compartmentalized tax system by design: money is raised where money is spent. It is a big country with big dfferences in cost of living so a uniform rate would either over-tax the low cost of living areas, under-tax and subsidize the expensive urban areas, or provide even more money for politicians to buy votes or waste or both. Total non-starter.
Nope.
Neither party wants it.
The left because sales taxes and VATs are regressive, weghing heavier upon the people with the lower incomes than the higher income folks. The right because they oppose taxes on principle and don't want to pour more money into bureaucratic money pits.
Edit: the US is a very big country with a free economy. This means that cost of living varies by 2-3x from the lowest to the highest regions. San Francisco cost of living is almost triple that of Nashville, Manhattan double that of Austin.
Here's one listing:
http://www.infoplease.com/business/e...us-cities.html
Plenty of others online.
The US doesn't do what other smaller, more homogeneous countries do because those "solutions" wouldn't work. It is bigger bigger and has a looser society that doesn't necessarily see the state as the best solution to problems. Rather it is recognized that often it is the mechanisms of state that are the problem.
Not alone in that.
But our "Brussels" is DC and seld-imposed.