As long-time readers know, I am convinced that the Obama administration is itching to slap the US economy with a value-added tax. Team Obama just needs to figure out how to do it politically. Listen to the POTUS in this BBW interview:
The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table. So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions. What I can’t do is to set the thing up where a whole bunch of things are off the table. Some would say we can’t look at entitlements. There are going to be some that say we can’t look at taxes, and pretty soon, you just can’t solve the problem.
In short, how I read this is that Obama is willing to consider a broad-based tax hike on the middle class. Smells like a VAT. But I don’t see how the WH gets there absent a financial crisis that puts Washington into a panic, just as happened with TARP. Maybe if Congress rejects the proposals of the new deficit commission, a bad market reaction would be a catalyst to action.
Of course, Obama could suggest the Hall-Rabushka flat consumption tax, a favorite with conservatives. It is like a VAT with part of the tax paid directly by individuals. This makes the tax more transparent, which politicians don’t like. To them, transparency is a bug not a feature. But the concern on the right is that an invisible VAT would make it too easy to raise taxes and finance a vast expansion of government. But even with an H-B tax, conservatives have no interest in a tax that would raise the tax burden as a way of increasing revenue as a portion of GDP from around 18 percent.