Obama's Debt Commission Considers Value-added Tax

Value Added Tax (VAT) Would Add 10% – 20% to Prices (Video)

November 26, 2010

Scotty Starnes - This will be pushed by Obama’s ‘deficit commission.’ Europe uses VAT taxes so it’s no surprise that lefties would try to push this on Americans.

President's Panel May Consider Value-added Tax

April 8, 2010

USA TODAY - Republicans who argue that President Obama's deficit commission is likely to consider a European-style value-added tax just got some fresh evidence.

Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf told reporters this morning that his agency is studying a VAT as part of its "strategic planning" for the future -- one in which the $1.5 trillion budget deficit and $12.5 trillion debt must be addressed by policy makers.

"Many people in Congress are interested in it," Elmendorf said, without specifying who.

A VAT is a type of sales tax in which each stage of production is taxed. It has the capability of raising huge amounts of revenue for the government. But it's loathed by anti-tax Republicans.

"This is not a deficit commission. It's a value-added tax commission," said former House majority leader Dick Armey, who heads the anti-tax group FreedomWorks.

One reason a VAT might be needed in the future: the cost of extending most of President George W. Bush's tax cuts for another decade, as President Obama wants to do.

"The net deficit increase in the budget ($8.5 trillion over 10 years) can all be boiled down to the extension of those tax cuts," Elmendorf said.

Is a National Sales Tax in Our Future?

May 28, 2009

WSJ - A debate in Washington could lead to you paying more for everything.

The possible tradeoff? Better health care for all.

Policymakers are debating a value-added tax, or VAT. Put simply, it’s a national sales tax. The concept was dismissed as a nonstarter among policymakers in the past, but is now wiggling its way into political conversation, according to the Washington Post.

From the WaPo:

A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American — a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.

Some debate that end result, the article says, and argue that the details could work out differently in practice in the U.S. One argument claims that those who are wealthier tend to consume more, and therefore would pay more VAT.

Although the VAT is only an idea at this point and unlikely to hit taxpayers anytime soon, it’s interesting to note that it’s now part of the conversation and that top VAT advocates are now represented in discussions. Especially now as the federal government looks for new ways to create revenue.

Europeans are no strangers to the VAT. It started in France in the 1950s and has spread to other European countries as well as Australia and India. Europeans even have to pay the VAT on U.S.-based things such as memberships on Second Life. The VAT has experienced success in countries where collecting taxes based on income is difficult, such as developing nations.

Fortune offers an example of how the VAT could figure into the purchase of a car:

Take, for instance, a car with a sticker price of $30,000 and a value-added rate of 10%. Ford might buy its steel and other materials for $8,000 plus $800 in a VAT tax. A dealer then pays $25,000 plus a $2,500 tax for the finished vehicle. Ford takes an $800 credit for the tax it already paid and sends $1,700 to the government. A buyer then pays $30,000 for the SUV and $3,000 in taxes. The dealer collects the $3,000, takes a credit for the $2,500 worth of taxes already paid, and sends $500 to tax authorities. Ultimately, the government pockets $3,000, or 10% of the retail price of the car, in taxes.

So the British government has raised taxes a little every year. One day you wake up and realize they tax about 70% of your earnings. The only cuts the government wants to do is cuts to social services. Anything that benefits the people. - Freebird100, Prison Planet Forum

Osborne's 'Tough' Package Puts VAT Up to 20%

Osborne: "The years of debt and spending made this unavoidable"

June 22, 2010

BBC News - Chancellor George Osborne increased VAT from 17.5% to 20% and cut welfare spending as he moved "decisively" to tackle Britain's record debts.

Child benefit and public sector pay will be frozen and 25% cut from public service spending - but alcohol, tobacco and fuel will escape tax hikes.

Unveiling his first Budget to MPs, Mr Osborne said "tough but fair" action on debt was "unavoidable".

But Labour said it was "reckless" and would "throw people out of work".

Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman said Mr Osborne's budget would stifle growth and hit hardest "those who can least afford it".

BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson described the financial statement as a "massive gamble economically and politically".

It represents a major departure from the previous government's economic policies, with business leaders saying they hoped it would be a "defining moment" in Britain's economic recovery.

But trade unions have warned hundreds of thousand of jobs could be lost in the public services, potentially wrecking local economies and sparking a "double-dip" recession.

Setting out his plans in the Commons, Mr Osborne said "decisive" action was needed to prevent a "catastrophic collapse" in economic confidence but stressed it would be done in a "fair" way with the better-off shouldering most of the burden.

"Everyone will pay something but the people at the bottom of the income scale will pay proportionately less than those at the top. This is a progressive Budget," he said to jeers from Labour MPs.

UK households, on average, will be about £400 a year worse off, Budget documents suggest, with the poorest 10% losing £200 and the richest £1,800, although the poorest will be hit harder than most as a percentage of their income.

Mr Osborne vowed to balance Britain's books within five years, with the bulk of the savings to come from cuts to benefits and public services rather than tax increases.

And he laid the blame for the state of the nation's finances squarely at the door of the previous Labour government, saying:

"The years of debt and spending make this unavoidable."

'Biggest gamble'

Tax credits will be cut for families earning more than £40,000 a year - and there will be a two year pay freeze for public servants paid more than £21,000. Those earning less will get a £250 rise for two years.

Mr Osborne also announced real terms cuts across all government departments of 25% over four years - except health and foreign aid which are ringfenced.

Will Hutton, of the Work Foundation, who is advising the government on public sector pay, described the cuts as "brutal" and questioned whether they were achievable without wrecking the coalition government. He described Mr Osborne's Budget as the "biggest gamble a post-war government has made".

The full details of the impact of the cuts will not be revealed until Wednesday 20 October, when Mr Osborne publishes his spending review.

The VAT increase, which Mr Osborne said would raise £13bn a year, is to come into effect in January...

Former Fed Mob Boss Calls for VAT and Carbon Taxes

April 7, 2010

Infowars.com - One thing is certain. If Obama and his “economic advisers” have their way, you will be paying significantly higher taxes directly to the banksters. Since payroll taxes are already egregiously high, the preferred method is either a sales tax or a so-called value added tax, also known as VAT. Glenn Beck is a fan of this form of government fleecing while his “conservative” counterpart Bill O’Reilly prefers a straight sales tax to pay down the national debt.

In steps Paul Volcker, the former Fed mob boss who now runs Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Volcker said yesterday the United States should consider imposing a European-styled VAT in order to get the deficit “under control,” as Fox News put it.

Volcker also told a panel discussing the global economic crisis at the New-York Historical Society that Americans needs to be socked with new taxes on carbon and energy.

If you want to know what Volcker has in mind, consider remarks he made in 2008: Americans have been living above their means for too long.

“It is the United States as a whole that became addicted to spending and consuming beyond its capacity to produce,” Volcker lectured the Economic Club of New York. “Bringing consumption back in line with income would not only crimp individuals and families, but also require major readjustments in the global economy,” said the Los Angeles Times.

Volcker did not bother to mention that America’s “capacity to produce” was exported by his globalist and corporatist pals to slave gulags in China. This was no mistake. It has as much to do with slave labor in China as stripping the United States of it capacity to produce.

Volcker is a founding member of the Trilateral Commission. The original stated purpose of the Trilateral Commission was to create a “New International Economic Order,” an order that is all the rage now with world leaders as the global economy implodes. Volcker is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly do their part to help the banksters usher in economic serfdom.

The “New International Economic Order” is a plan to turn the world into a global debt slave plantation and reduce humanity to a groveling peonage that must pay fealty to the financial elite.

In the United States, the entire money supply is debt owed to private bankers.

“Banks create the principal but not the interest necessary to pay back their loans, so more money is always owed back than was put into the money supply in the first place. More loans must therefore continually be taken out to cover the interest, spiraling the economy into increasing levels of debt and inflation, in a futile attempt to repay principal and interest on a debt that is actually impossible to repay,” writes Dr. Ellen Brown.

Brown notes that a system of “debt peonage” is inextricably linked to a banking system. It is a way to reduce once powerful and proud nations to third world status.

Americans are collateral against an unpayable federal debt and thus “economic slaves,” James Traficant noted in 1993.

“We the People are the tenants and sharecroppers renting our own property from a Sovereign in the guise of the Federal Reserve Bank. We the people have exchanged one master for another,” he said.

Volcker’s VAT is but another scheme to steal the remaining wealth of the nation and reduce a once productive populace to economic serfdom. Global taxes under a carbon scheme will be the final nail in the coffin of the once great United States.

Cranking up the national debt is not incidental. It is integral to the globalist plan to force every American — and their children and grand children — into economic serfdom.