Progressive Consumption Tax

My intuition for quite some time has been that most taxes on domestic businesses should be discarded, as well as the income tax. But a flat tax, apart from not being "fair," puts the republic at too much risk of being or continuing to be owned by "aristo-garchs." I have thought we should instead move towards a progressive tax on consumption, and all lobbying payments should be imputed as political consumption by some one. Since money paid for consumption purposes is not directly related among the wealthy to income, it often tends towards being a substitute for a tax on wealth. That helps defend against private ownership of government. I posed this as an off beat idea, because it seemed sensible, but it is almost never discussed. At least, not to my experience. Now I see Bill Gates is advocating something similar, at http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti....

I don't think a flat tax would be a fair tax. There are at least two kinds of consumption taxes: a sales tax on sales of new items, and a progressive tax on every kind of accumulated personal taxable consumption. For most people, it would be a tax on all personal receipts less savings. I tend to think most non-business transfers, gifts, interest payments, and campaign contributions and lobbying expenses and charitable deductions, such as to foundations and even churches, should not be allowed. By that I mean they should be taxed as forms of consumption.

A base deduction should be allowed, in general respect of living essentials, such as for to and fro expenses for work related auto, gas, clothing, uniform, tools. IOW, there should be no progressive consumption tax until a floor of consumption has been made. When a business pays such expenses for an employee over the amount of the floor, the excess value should be imputed to the employee as part of his accumulation of consumption.

In country purchases made by a domestic business to sustain or grow its business ought not ordinarily be subject to tax. General advertising expenses ought not be taxed. Provided, expenses for directly lobbying or contributing to campaigns of legislators ought not be considered as business expenses. Rather, they should be treated as taxable consumption expenses, imputed to the authorizing officer or CEO.

Since most people consume almost every dollar they make, transition would seem to pose no shock to the system. It would eliminate paperwork in taxing domestic corporations, which simply pass the tax on anyway. It would encourage savings. It would put in place means for making it expensive to buy politicians and would at least put related revenues in the general treasury. Maybe the idea will seem less hare brained as it gets more bits of attention here and there. I doubt it could be worse than what we have now.

Note the state and local effect, since the wealthy centered around places where the cost of living is high (D.C.) would be encouraged to relocate to more rural locales.

Something needs to be done to address the problem of corporatists, especially foreign corporatists, essentially buying the government. Note that a progressive consumption tax would not check the accumulation of domestic business wealth. What it would check would be abusive personal expenditures of wealth. It would tax individuals' contributions to churches. It would not tax church expenditures for charitable purposes. It would impute taxable consumption to church officials who distributed monies for other than church purposes.


The problem with consenting to be ruled by the international community is that it in effect constitutes consenting to be ruled by the biggest despots. The problem with free trade with international muggers is that it constitutes consent to be mugged by international muggers. The problem with a republic surrendering its rule to international elite corporatists is that it constitutes surrender of the republic. The problem with tolerating Islamists and despots who do not tolerate you is that it leads to your abject submission. Which is called the peace of the serfs and the dhimmis. The problem with Obama is that he is a despotic, islamic, mugger. He's not a free enterpriser. He's a godless criminal crony capitalizer who lies with communitarian fairy tales.