Now, I’m no conspiracy theorist type person. However, I have to say that it is quite apparent to me that Obama and his clan obviously have some long term plans to turn America into the next country to join the socialist European union. I see a large monster coming over the horizon, and that monster is the VAT.
What’s that? Never heard of it? You will. VAT stands for Value Added Tax. It is essentially a national sales tax. But it’s not that simple. It’s a tax that will greatly increase the cost of goods and services in America , driving more manufacturing overseas (which will probably end up having an import VAT anyway…go figure).
Here’s how the whole scheme works. Let’s take an item you might find at your local target…something lots of people have, and are starting to use more and more this time of year. It’s your friend and mine, the grill. I love my grill. My wife bought one for me for my birthday. We use it a lot. I made some great burgers on it last night, as a matter of fact.
Anyway, what the value added tax does is tax each level of production of that grill. Still confused? Yeah, so was I until someone explained it to me. Let’s use a basic Weber charcoal grill. First off, that grill is made out of metal. That metal has to be made in wherever it is made. The smelting/whatever plant that makes that metal pays for the raw materials. On top of that, they pay VAT. Ok, now they’ve made their metal things and sell those to Weber for the actual manufacturing of that grill. Weber pays the people that made that metal for the metal, and yet another VAT. Weber sells that grill to Target, who pays for the grill, and another VAT. You go to Target to buy a grill, because hey, it’s spring, it’s time to grill. You pay for that grill. You pay for the state income tax…AND you pay another VAT. The idea here is that whenever value is added to an product, there is an arbitrary tax put on that item, no matter what stage of the manufacturing process it is in.
Right there is 4 levels of taxation. That ends up being a lot of money. Sometimes 50% of the value of the item being sold. How do I know this? Well, I used to sell pro audio equipment for the tv and film industry. I had customers all over the world. Those poor guys in Europe had to pay a VAT for anything that came into the country. I was instructed by these guys to mark the value of whatever I had sold them significantly lower than what the item was actually valued at due to the VAT. If I sold a recorder that was $13,000 (yes, they cost that much), I had customers tell me to put the customs invoice at something like $1000 so they wouldn’t get raped on VAT.
I bet you are asking why the government would even consider something like a VAT. Well, since Obamacare has passed, and there is no way to pay for it, some people in government have been advocating the idea of a VAT. Remember that promise to not raise taxes on the middle class (which has already been broken) that Obama was touting during his campaign? Well, this VAT would break that promise in a big big way. I’m not saying it’s a sure thing, but the way things are going, it’s going to come up within the next few years for debate in congress. This would be a national sales tax on top of state sales tax.
Aren’t we taxed enough? To think that some people in government think this is a good idea shows just how out of touch with the real world they really are. I advocate for not paying income tax, but this VAT is something that couldn’t be avoided, just like sales tax. You can’t tell the people at target you refuse to pay the sales tax because it is morally objectionable. They’ll look at you like you have two heads. You can’t get out of it. That’s why websites like Amazon.com are so popular. I can buy stuff and not pay tax on it. It’s great. Maybe I’ll pay shipping, but most of the time the shipping is either free for super saver shipping or is less than tax.
Anyway, look for the VAT discussion within the next year or so. I’d be surprised if it isn’t at least floated out there as an idea to get people talking about some sort of tax increase on Americans. You know, to soften us up. Propose something that’s really bad, knowing it’ll go down in flames to only have us put up with some new tax that is only a little less offensive.
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