{"id":539449,"date":"2010-04-22T10:27:08","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T14:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/james-pethokoukis\/?p=3753"},"modified":"2010-04-22T10:27:08","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T14:27:08","slug":"the-reality-behind-the-vat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/539449","title":{"rendered":"The reality behind the VAT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at the very fine <a href=\"http:\/\/taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org\/blog\/_archives\/2010\/4\/20\/4509996.html\">TaxVox<\/a> blog, Howard Gleckman writes a good explanatory piece on the current VAT debate. But this one \u00a0part really struck me:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Our current revenue system has reached its breaking point. To fix our terrible budget problem, we are going to have to cut spending. But we are also going to have to raise more revenue. And for the life of me, I don\u2019t understand why we wouldn\u2019t want to do so in the most efficient way possible. And that may lead us to a consumption tax in one form or another, Senate resolutions notwithstanding.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Me: \u00a0That was directed at conservative critics of the VAT. \u00a0Now from what I can tell, plenty of conservatives would have no problem with a VAT if it a) replaced the income tax and b) was designed to boost tax revenue by boosting economic growth. \u00a0And as far as a way of increasing the tax burden, the budget cuts are going to have to come first. Optimize government, try to quick the pace of GDP growth and then raise taxes if necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at the very fine TaxVox blog, Howard Gleckman writes a good explanatory piece on the current VAT debate. But this one \u00a0part really struck me: Our current revenue system has reached its breaking point. To fix our terrible budget problem, we are going to have to cut spending. But we are also going to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1063,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1063"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}