RE: Consumption Tax

In Steve's lengthy response to RT Miller, he neglected to touch on one point that I find to be an oft-ignored potential solution to many tax burden issues: federal taxation based upon consumption.

I didn't address it because it was off-topic and responding to Tucker is bad enough without having to chase his moving target topics.

However, since you bring it up, a sales (or consumption) tax is the only constitutional and the only moral tax that should be levied by the federal government. It is instructive to note at this point that the Congress had to sneak through a constitutional amendment to impose the income tax since the founders expressly forbad the Congress to impose an excise tax on individuals. All your points are valid on it, with the most important point being that it is a non-regressive, participatory tax.

There is a lot of discussion on how to implement it, but to remain safely within constitutional limits, IMO, it should be a tax on interstate transactions at the wholesale level. All of the benefits you outline would be realized with such a tax.