Re: Does consumption tax include real estate sales? (Was: Consumption 2)

From: Russell Turpin (rturpin@clickfeed.com)
Date: Fri Mar 30 2001 - 09:21:31 PST


> The blue collar worker is *starting his own business.*
> It's a B2B transaction. It's not taxed.

That's fair in principle. But it comes as the expense
of administrative complexity and inevitable widespread
cheating. Everyone who purchases an arc welder is
going to claim that it has intended business use. The
FairTax Collection Service, soon to replace the IRS,
will get into the business of deciding when these
claims are legitimate, creating hoops one must jump
to assert such claim, and retroactively investigating
claims it finds suspicious. This likely would not be
as intrusive as the income tax. When it comes to
taxes, though, I place a high priority on simple, and
unintrusive.

> BTW, Russell has at last out-ed himself to me.
> After years and years of being (I thought) the
> staunchest free-marketer and libertarian I've
> known, I find he's been hiding his softie social
> democrat tendencies...

True libertarians oppose incorporation. The notion
of a corporation as an artifical person is a State
sham, intended to separate investors from liability
for their decisions. A group can make whatever rules
it wants to manage itself. Of course. But the State
should not give it special status because of that, and
certainly should not prevent aggrieved parties from
pursuing liability straight through to those who
financially underwrote the harmful act.

I was corrupted when I became a corporate officer.
You led me down the primrose path, and turned me
into a softie social democrat who believes in the
State, incorporation, investment without liability,
and other unlibertarian ideas. ;-)

Regards,
Russell



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:15:16 PDT