VAT, You are Too Old Baby Boomers, Bend Over

Value-Added Tax (VAT), very similar to New Mexico's GRT which taxes products over and over and over, coming soon if Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, has his way.

"Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look

...And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform, balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent. A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation's debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor...."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/26/AR2009052602909.html?nav=rss_email/components

You are Too Old Baby Boomers
IRS tax revenue falls along with taxpayers' income

...The government may have a hard time trimming spending to reduce the deficit when the recession ends. The 77 million Baby Boomers— those born in 1946 through 1964 — will start tapping their federal retirement benefits soon, which means increased government outlays for Social Security and Medicare....

The American consumer led us out of previous recessions with some semblance of gusto," Lonski says. "They're too old to do it now."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2009-05-26-irs-tax-revenue-down_N.htm


Bend Over
"Presidential Fundraising Trips Leave Taxpayers With Hefty Tab

...But when the president hit the road Tuesday for a two-day fundraising tour to pack the party coffers, he also was racking up a $265,000 partisan bill for just one leg of the trip, according to a watchdog group -- part of which taxpayers, regardless of party affiliation, will have to pay....

A 2006 report for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that during 2002, political campaigns reimbursed the federal government for $198,000 of the $6.5 million in flight expenses racked up by campaign-related stops made by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. That's 3 percent of the total cost.

Taxpayers paid the remaining $6.3 million."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/27/presidential-fundraising-trips-cost-taxpayers-thousands/