by Anthony Megna

Created on: August 24, 2010   Last Updated: December 10, 2011

A national sales tax?  A very big yes to that!  The reason?  Because there is something called a shadow economy that exists here in the United States, as well as in other countries.  What is a shadow economy?  It's also called the black market, and this market is in the billions of dollars!  That's billions with a B!

A national sales tax will grab some of that money that is not being taxed right now.  No matter who you are, whether you operate in a legal fashion and pay your income taxes or whether you are a criminal and prefer to operate in the dark, you have to live.  You have to eat, transport yourself, breathe, etc.  A  national sales tax that would be imposed would affect everyone, no matter who you are. 

The idea is that very, very gradually the income tax would be eliminated, and the national sales tax would be introduced starting with pennies on the dollar.  Without going into all the mathematical equations, the fact is that more money would be raised with a national sales tax, and less pain for everyone, by eliminating the personal income tax.  Why penalize the hard workers?

The way the tax system is set up is topsy-turvy.  The income tax imposes penalties the more money you make!  This is just crazy!  It takes away the incentive to work hard, as who wants to pay more taxes?  If you work hard, then you should be able to keep more of the money you make.  That's just common sense.  The more motivation one has to work and keep their money, the better off the economy will be.  I'd be willing to say that this stubborn recession we're all in would disappear rapidly as well.

The other problem with the income tax as it stands now is that it's not capturing all the money that is hidden in the economy.  That's money from drug-dealing, illegal gambling, gun-running and other nefarious activities.  This has nothing to do with crime, this has to do with the money that is floating around as the result of these activities.  Even criminals would like to see a booming economy!

What a national sales tax would do by gathering up all of that hidden money is provide a huge surplus that could go to fixing our crumbling infrastructure, as well as provide better education, health care, social security programs and so forth.  It just makes sense!  No one is going to complain if they have to pay a few extra pennies on goods and services.  I would bet most would want to see that rather than have their paychecks shrunk they way they are now.  And the people that don't collect a legal paycheck?  Well, they are going to contribute as well! 

So a national sales tax has win-win written all over it!  Some politician should run on the basis of this issue and this issue alone!  The odds are the votes would swing in their favor, unless people would rather have their paychecks taxed to kingdom come.......

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