[AChimp]

In most places in Canada, we pay TWO separate sales taxes, provincial and federal. All it serves to do is increase the price of goods and services (necessities are exempt from these sales tax, but that doesn't amount to much outside of real food) AND it raised the base price of items because merchants had to make up for the sales tax that they paid for stuff, and so on up and up the product chain.

Adding a sales tax isn't just "consumer/end-user sales"; it applies to every transaction between every middleman and every supplier. When their costs go up, their sale prices also go up, and it is the consumer who pays for it in the end... unless that consumer will be content with only buying milk and bread for the rest of his or her life.

This article talks about making it "progressive" by offering rebates and exemptions, but how will that be organized? Give every poor person an ID card that they can flash at the till which will tell the cashier not to charge them tax? The merchant still had to pay the sales tax on that item, so now your businesses are losing money.

Redemptions and rebates? They will never be able to fully reimburse every poor person the full amount that they have paid annually in taxes. Get them to save receipts? Ha... you still need accountants to verify the sums, and accountants COST money. Give everyone a flat amount? Well, you'd be handing out extra money to some people and not giving enough to other people, and people like Vinth would just have another thing to whine about being unfair.

In the end, it just keeps the poor at the bottom like the current system. They don't pay any income tax already, so eliminating income tax to champion the poor is stupid.