Archive for October, 2010

A bill proposed to Congress to affix a 1% tax on any transaction in which any payment instrument was used.  That adds up to a whole lot of YOUR money and it never stops.

Congressional Research Service Summary

The following summary was written by the Congressional Research Service, a well-respected nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress. GovTrack did not write and has no control over these summaries.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-4646&tab=summary

HR 4646

2/23/2010–Introduced.

Debt Free America Act – States as purposes of this Act the raising of sufficient revenue from a fee on transactions to eliminate the national debt within seven years and the phasing out of the individual income tax. Amends the Internal Revenue Code to impose a 1% fee, offset by a corresponding nonrefundable income tax credit, on transactions that use a payment instrument, including any check, cash, credit card, transfer of stock, bonds, or other financial instrument. Defines “transaction” to include retail and wholesale sales, purchases of intermediate goods, and financial and intangible transactions. Establishes in the legislative branch the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action to review the fiscal imbalance of the federal government and make recommendations to improve such imbalance. Provides for expedited consideration by Congress of Task Force recommendations. Repeals after 2017 the individual income tax, refundable and nonrefundable personal tax credits, and the alternative minimum tax (AMT) on individuals. Directs the Secretary of the Treasury to: (1) prioritize the repayment of the national debt to protect the fiscal stability of the United States; and (2) study and report to Congress on the implementation of this Act.

This sounds as if it includes anything you buy AND anything you sell.  If you buy a house for $300,000, it will cost you $3,000 in taxes.  If you sell that house for $300,000, you will pay another $3,000.  Any transaction would include depositing your pay check in the bank.  That is a financial transaction which uses a check.  If I buy a bike from you for $100, it sounds like we both pay a 1% tax on the transaction.

For the full text:

People, this would hit you every time you made a withdrawal of your own money from an ATM machine and is in addition to ATM fees imposed by the banks owning the ATM machines.  If you put your money in the bank, you can’t get all of it back.  What happens when you sit down to pay your bills every month?  Those are financial transacations because you pay by check, cash or credit card or auto deduction by your financical institution.  This is going to increase every bill you owe.  The proposed bill stipulates both sales and purchases, meaning that every transaction must be double taxed.  Both the seller and the purchaser will owe the tax.

If you have any doubt about the magnitude of this proposed tax, make a serious effort to watch everything you do all day, every day, and calculate in  your mind, how much each transaction would cost you.  Keep a calculater handy and add up a day’s worth, a week’s worth, a month’s worth of your transactions.  You will probably be shocked at how quickly it adds up to significant amounts.

The conclusion has to be that our government is addicted to spending our money and will never stop nor cut back.  Their appetite for our money and the ever increasing national debt, which is no fault of the good people earning the money, will dictate the constant increasing of taxes levied upon us until they become unstainable – a word the government loves to use to push us into more spending and taxing.

Our survival depends on U.S., THE PEOPLE, refusing to accept any more taxes and demanding that our government stop the spending now and roll back previous spending commitments.  Note that they will immediately discuss cutting spending on our Social Security, our Medicare and Medicaid, our veterans’ benefits and medical care, our military pay, benefits, and funding the equipment needs of our military.  They will never discuss cutting the spending on the National Endowment for the Arts which has, in the past, paid for child pornography and paintings denegrating Jesus Christ.  The Arts are leisure products, not essential like funding our military and SS and Medicare for seniors.  They will never discuss cutting spending on frog crossings on California highways, or Viagra for prisoners (sneaked into a bill that no one read before voting on it).  All of the wasteful pork will not be discussed as the places to cut.

It seems that they first talk about cutting essential services to the people in an effort to scare us out of demanding that Congress stop spending.  They trot out the old tried and true, “We will have to cut teachers, firemen and policemen.”  Never, “We will have to cut grants to universities to preserve fifty drawers of dead butterfly wings.”  They never say, “We will cut the gazillions we send to foreign countries that hate us.”  Nope, they go straight to Social Security that they took from everyone’s paychecks whether we agreed or not and before we got the first dime of our earnings.  If you demand they cut back their spending, they will punish you by cutting your Social Security, no matter how many years you were forced to pay into it.