Joe Conason, Salon: "No new taxes" for GOP -- except a national sales tax

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Wednesday, Oct 13, 2010 13:08 ET
Joe Conason
"No new taxes" for GOP -- except a national sales tax
Republicans swear they won't raise taxes -- but Rand Paul and Paul Ryan want to tax everything you buy
By Joe Conason

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/republican_party/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/10/13/salestax



Can you guess which tax is bad, bad, bad when suggested by Democrats but perfectly acceptable when proposed by Republicans? Listening to Rand Paul and Paul Ryan, among others, the answer is a national sales tax or value-added tax, known in Europe as a VAT. While Republicans argue ferociously to preserve the Bush tax cuts for America’s wealthiest families, the notion of a new federal tax on goods and services - which would disproportionately penalize working consumers -- is becoming fashionable among their party’s most prominent figures.

The Kentucky Republican Senate candidate made headlines yesterday when he proposed a national sales tax to replace the income tax, but Paul is scarcely alone in preferring a tax that falls most heavily on the middle class, workers and the poor. Rep. Ryan’s budget "roadmap," released earlier this year to much fanfare in the conservative and mainstream media, relies on an 8.5 percent "business consumption" tax -- yet another name for what Europeans call a VAT. From Arizona to Maine, Republican candidates seem increasingly eager to impose a national sales tax -- and although they usually say this new tax would “replace” the income tax and abolish the IRS, such fantasies aren't contemplated by Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee.

Regressive taxation is a perennial enthusiasm among conservatives. But whatever happened to "no new taxes" and the Taxpayer Protection Pledge popularized by Grover Norquist? Ryan and Paul are both among the signatories of the Norquist pledge, a document that forbids any “changes in tax deductions or credits that increase the tax burden on Americans,” as a national sales tax or VAT would inevitably do -- especially if it doesn’t replace income and wage taxes. Evidently the Wisconsin Republican believed he could get away with sneaking a VAT into his budget plan (which is one of several reasons that the Ryan roadmap would increase the tax burden on most American families while lavishing new tax breaks on the wealthiest few).

This right-wing sales-tax vogue represents not only a departure from conservative orthodox but an embarrassing plunge into political hypocrisy. Soon after health care reform passed last spring, dire predictions of an "Obama sales tax" to pay for the program blared from the likes of the Republican National Committee, RedState, and Norquist himself, who warned that any promises to replace the income tax should be considered worthless. The anti-tax crusader remarked disdainfully last summer that "VAT is French for big government," while RNC chairman Michael Steele denounced the idea as an example of the despised "European-style" policies favored by the president. (Of course, many conservatives simply adore European ideology as long as the authors are Austrian and ultra-right, but that’s another flavor of hypocrisy.)

[Bitwit1234]

1. And just think of this for example. Most religious organizations

BECAUSE THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT, the IRS does not question them, they buy stuff in the name of the church?? no sales tax they are tax free and then RENT IT BACK TO THEMSELVES for a small fee and no tax again.

[Hannah Bell]

2. +100