Value Added Tax (VAT) - Unfair and Insane

by Herman Cain

There’s one message from the 2010 elections that many so-called policy makers, political elites and analysts did not hear. Namely, the American people are not as uninformed and stupid as they think we are.

President Obama’s Debt Commission and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force have both floated their ideas for reducing our nation’s runaway national debt. As CNNMoney.com reports, both sets of ideas echo each other in broad strokes. And both sets of ideas could confuse and confound the leaves off a tree.

These ideas are a long way from becoming law, but they are generating, as intended, much discussion about the merits of each idea.

The worst idea is a proposed national sales tax, which is a disguised VAT (value added tax) on top of everything we already pay in federal taxes.

A national retail sales tax on top of all the confusing and unfair taxes we have today is insane! It gives the out-of-control bureaucrats and politicians in denial one more tool to lie, deceive, manipulate and destroy this country.

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Value Added Tax Will Destroy Economy

A new study warns that a value-added tax would kill 850,000 jobs in a year and cut retail spending by $2.5 trillion over 10 years. Sounds too bad for Washington to pass up.


An analysis for the National Retail Federation by Ernst & Young finds that adding a VAT to the U.S. tax system would reduce GDP for years, causing the loss of "850,000 jobs in the first year," plus "700,000 fewer jobs 10 years later."

A VAT imposed in such a way would also cause retail spending to drop by almost $260 billion — or 5% — in the first year alone, according to the study. As a result, "most Americans over 21 years of age when the VAT is enacted would be worse off," and there would be "significant redistributional effects across generations, reducing real incomes and employment for current workers."

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