Excellent Post by Ellen Brown
Financial Transactions Tax
This might be a little off from my usual content; but, while working for the State Department back in the mid-sixties, I was put in charge of fiscal reform in Vietnam. Just to widen our understanding of taxes, let me take a moment of your time to explain the options that I could see as a young economist in a country ripped apart by war.
Having once been a French colony, Vietnam inherited a system of taxation that involved filing financial information with the Ministry of Finance. Unlike the American system, only the data was submitted, no payment. Auditors would review the numbers and send a bill. If no request for payment was received within three years, the window of opportunity for collection passed.
All but three auditors had been drafted so not many returns made it to the top of pile, and Vietnam was consequently running deeply in the red. My job was to find a way to generate enough revenue that the government could operate without subsidies, i.e., Vietnam could stand on its own feet, presumably therefore making it easier for the U.S. to withdraw.
After considerable thought, I proposed converting from an income tax to a consumption tax that completely exempted necessities and had varying rates for other purchases depending on a sort of luxury yardstick. Just so this is as clear as possible, a bicycle might be tax exempt but a basic car would be taxed, and a Mercedes or other high-end car would be quite heavily taxed. This seemed equitable because anyone who could afford to buy something that exceeded some basic standard was obviously wealthier than others who were most likely struggling to survive. The Minister of Finance liked the proposal so he set up a work space in his office where my Vietnamese assistant and I worked with his staff until we completed the entire reform of the system. The plan was adopted by the South Vietnamese government and copied by several international organizations for use in other third world countries.
In short, I am more than qualified to recommend this absolutely brilliant concept for taxation discussed in a recent post by Ellen Brown. If you think reading about taxes might be boring, think again. In this proposal, income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and the IRS could all disappear forever along with national debt. Did you hear “brilliant”?
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