OT: tax on internet purchase 3565

John Hasler

Much like the way U.S. income taxes index up from inflation pushing us into higher brackets? We don't vote for those increases, our congress-critters don't take any heat for them, but we still pay more, don't we?

Somewhere in my family there's a 1930-something tax return for my paternal grandfather. It shows him reporting an income of some $30,000, a fair fortune in those days, but he didn't pay a lot of tax - I forget what it was, but not much. Of course we have many more programs to fund now, and I really don't object to paying my taxes. I earn a lot less money (relatively) than he did, and my taxes are high but not yet outrageous. Yet, because of inflation, I could get stuck with a higher

Even the so-called indexing of exemptions etc. doesn't really level taxes to what they were originally set at. Inflation lets government collect more taxes without raising taxes - in fact, it lets them pretend to lower taxes and take credit for giving you back part of what they let inflation steal.

I'm in favor of flat consumption taxes - yes, national sales tax or vat. You can exempt necessities and anything else you want to avoid burdening the poor.. oh well, now we are REALLY off topic..

What we need is a way to tax spam..

-- Tony Lawrence