MO CUT Tax
A Look at a Currency Use Tax for the
State of Missouri
The
Proposal
The goal
of this proposal is to create a tax system that treats all individuals and
organizations equally, without favoring or targeting any group or individual or
activity.
This
proposal is to replace the State Sales Tax, The State Personal Income Tax, and
The State Corporate Tax for Missouri, with a fixed Gross Revenue tax
automatically withdrawn at the financial institution.
This tax
will apply when any individual or organization deposits any new funds into a
financial institution in the State of Missouri, that fits the criteria for
taxation, then a fee will be extracted at the point of the deposit.
The
criteria for the enforcement of this fee will be any funds that originate
outside of the identity of the depositor, or from listed exclusions from
taxation. It will be determined by protocols, and monitored by the state
banking regulators.
Some of
the exclusion will be return of principle from interest bearing account, social
security, and possibly other government payments including hazard pay for the
military. These exclusions could be determined by the state legislature.
Electronically managed investment account could also be included in the return
of principle concept, and acquisition of capital could be included, but not
capital improvements. Capital improvement is a subjective value, and prone to
shielding of personal expenditures.
All official
federal, state, and local government accounts will be the only accounts exempted
from the protocols, thus exempt from the fee.
The
purpose of exclusions is to include all individuals and organizations equally.
Thus, only include hard acquisition cost. And not create a situation where any
allowed exclusion can be claimed by one entity, but not another.
There will
be no industry or individual specific exclusions.
The goal
of this form of taxation is to expand the tax base in an effort to reduce the
overall rate to all entities.
The
initial rate for this tax would be 2.8%. Although this rate could be adjusted
as necessary as part of the budgetary process. There will be not limits for
raising or lowering of this tax, and automatic adjustments will be set by the
first draft of this law, in the event of a budgetary impasse.
The fee
returned to financial institution for implementing this form of taxation shall
be set by the legislature.
There will
be no exclusions from this tax based on the profit or nonprofit status of the
organization, including political organizations. All entities conducting business
at Missouri financial institutions shall be subject to this fee, regardless of
residency requirements.
Conscientious
objection shall be allow through strict cash or barter exchanges, where no
funds are transferred though a financial institution.
Preface
In 2013 I spent nine months writing a concept book outlining a proposal for a transactional tax I called The CUT(Currency Use Tax) Tax. Now I am trying to write state specific versions to provide baselines to better determine the overall tax rate for this version of taxation. Now, all calculation will be based on a static basis. Therefore, results may vary. I feel this static assessment would lead to higher rates than necessary to maintain a revenue neutral change over rate. I have kept the math simple, too make it verifiable to the average person, based on data readily available on the internet. The reason the rates will be higher than the actual rate is because, I do not factor in the cost of savings, and the additional spending power of the average middle class wage earner, or business.
The state versions of this idea will not go into depth on the ideas I considered in formulating this plan. For that refer to original The CUT Tax book, and possibly a newer version that I hope to release soon.
I know the second tax in the CUT Tax is redundant. However I am not a movie director so I could not run around calling it The CUT. The word “CUT” needs a qualifier behind it, and The CUT Fee may have created a little confusion. I didn’t want the Courts asking. Is this a fee or is it a Tax? I just wanted to be very clear that I view this concept as a Tax. There is one option I am looking into. I may change it to the CUFF (Currency Use Financial Fee) in the future. However, that would entail a large amount of work and expense to initiate at this time,
The CUT Tax differs from other transactional tax in the triggering mechanism. The CUT Tax is designed to act as an automatic Gross Receipts tax. The transaction would only happen on transactions that originate outside of the identity of the individual account holder. Or on new revenue. There would be limited exemptions from this rule. The largest exemption would be the return of principle from interest bearing instruments. Examples would be: savings accounts, certificates of deposit, bonds, and mortgages. In those cases only interest and fees would be considered a new source of revenue, therefore subject to the CUT Tax. Other forms of transactional taxes that have been proposed would include, The FAIR Tax, (A sales taxed based idea), and the APT Tax (A “blind” transactional tax on every possible transaction with no exceptions).
When I first developed this idea, I excluded Missouri as an ideal candidate for this tax. Primarily due to the geographic makeup of the State. I envisioned more isolated populations as the best candidates to try this form of taxation statewide. States like California, Alaska, Texas, Hawaii, Montana, Colorado, and many other states that I pictured as more geographically remote. In that they did not have major population centers within easy commuting distance to a neighboring state.
This was because I viewed this tax as functioning without enforcement mechanisms created to ensure compliance. And with Missouri having several metropolitan areas that share borders with different states, I feared a large amount of non-compliance, without the cooperation of the neighboring state. However, with the push for a version of the “FAIR Tax” within our state, I viewed the potential loss of revenue to be less than the Fair Tax losses. Therefore, just as effective, if not more so.
All plans have trade-offs, and this plan is no exception. This system would work better for the wage earning middle-class and small businesses. However, it could increase cost on businesses and on wealthier individuals. The effects of the FAIR Tax would be the opposite effect.
I also understand that many of the saving to corporations and non-profits from removal of income tax compliance cost and FICA match, would not become viable unless this system was enacted nationwide. Therefore, I will outline the proposal for both the prospect of enacting before a nationwide version would be enacted, or, the CUT Tax could be passed with the qualification that it would not go into effect unless the Federal Government adopts this system.
Since I have not developed a National platform in which to launch a campaign from. I will start small. I have always heard that all politics is local. So I will start at the state level first.
Explaining the Concept
In order to understand how the CUT Tax works, I will lay out
a simple transaction.
When you deposit any money into a financial institution,
this will trigger a computer program or protocol to determine the eligibility
of the tax. It would determine if the
source of funds originated from outside of the identity of the depositor. This
can be determined by listing the accounts held by the individual identity at
other institutions. Then the protocol would determine if it originated from
excluded sources like return of principle on instrument bearing accounts.
Once the eligibility for the tax is determined, the tax
would be withdrawn from the deposit and the tax would be held in escrow until
the funds would be transferred to the governmental treasury at a predetermined
time. Then the financial institution would receive a predetermined fee to
complete the transaction.
Unfortunately all cash deposits would count as an external
source since the origin would be undeterminable. However, the reverse is
possible. If you want to avoid the tax than you only have to function on barter
or a cash only basis. This is very hard to do in today’s economy. And for this
tax to be efficient it must operate at a fee that falls below or equal to the cost
entailed to live on a cash only basis. This would allow for legitimate
conscientious objection to taxes, and create a competitive pressure on the tax
rate.
Most people do not think of the hidden cost that comes with
operating on a cash only basis. The biggest cost is really a risk assessment. If
someone robs you of a couple hundred dollars in cash, even if the perpetrator
is caught, it is unlikely you will have your money replaced unless caught
immediately after the theft. In a theft due through identity theft, you have a
better chance at recovering the funds as long as you are aware that it had
happened.
Then you have security cost, which can involve the purchase
of safes, security guards and other creative hiding spots. Banks have learned
this lesson early in the creation of the banking system. Most only carry enough
hard currency to maintain use cycles of the community they operate in. They
have found that it is safer to loan out money to credit worthy individuals than
to hoard all of their cash assets in a vault.
In this fashion they can spread their risk across a broad spectrum of
investments, and even create a profit for the bank.
Then we get into logistics of currency. The individual may not stop to think of the
convenience such instrument like checks, debit and credit cards have made in
their lives. You no longer have to worry about bringing sufficient cash when
going about your daily life. Or having insufficient
cash on hand in an emergency. Now it is
just a matter of properly managing your accounts.
People always ask. If people have to pay a fee, won’t they
just go to using cash? I say ask the retailers and credit card companies. The
credit card companies charge a fee on the gross amount to retailers when they
accept the usage of credit cards. And that seems to be working for them. When
was the last time you paid cash price at the fuel pump? Not that long ago there
was two prices on most fuel pumps. One for credit, and one for cash. That was
because of the fee credit card companies charged. That fee did not go away, it
is just incorporated into one price, and you pay it even if you use cash.
In effect the CUT Tax works like the transaction fee charged
by you card issuer. In the state version
it is harder to validate this charge, since states do not create their own form
of currency. However, they do regulate the banking industry in their state. On
the National level. I could point out that currency does function like a
commodity, and therefore, the creator has the right to access a fair market fee
for the use of the currency. Thus the CUT Tax.
Arriving at the Tax
Percentage.
When I wrote the original book, I spent a couple of weeks
running numbers from public data that was reported to the SEC by various
publicly owned companies and reverse engineered a number and applying it to the
percentage of the overall market in their sector, to get me close to what I
envisioned to be the gross GDP at the time. The number I came up with was 3.8%
rate. Meaning if every dollar was taxed the same based on GDP. What would the
rate be?
Later, I found a short cut on the US department of Commerce
Bureau of Economic Analysis web page (Interactive Data, 2012) . And used the
treasury number for total receipts for that year. Around $2,450 billion
dollars. I arrived at a 3.77% rate. These numbers have been revised and have
changed a little. Currently the GDP number is around $64,652.6 billion for
2012, combined with the number from the Tax Policy Center (Tax facts,
n.d.)
That would make the new number .0378
after rounding.
I showed how I have arrived at the national tax rate as a
frame of reference. The state version of this tax is not much different, and
although you can dispute the data I am using, and the method. I contend that
although not precise, it is a good estimation of the actual number.
Missouri derives its revenue from a few different sources:
Personal Income Tax, Sales Tax, Corporate Income Tax, Gaming Tax, Federal
grants and other fees and use taxes. I will only concentrate on the Corporate
and personal income tax, and Sales tax, and leave the Federal, gaming and use
taxes as is.
I have used ballotpedia.org (Missouri State Budget., n.d.) . Which collects
budget data from all of the different states. And the revenue numbers for FY
2013 are Personal Income Tax $5,489 Million, Sales Tax $1,872 Million, and
Corporate tax $415 Million. For a combined total of $7,776 Million.
And to determine the states gross revenue, I went to the
MERIC (Missouri Economic Research and Information Center) (Economic
Indicators/Gross Domestic Product, n.d.) . And their number
was $276,345 Million. So that would make the CUT Tax rate 2.8% to replace the Income
and Sales Tax portion.
That would make the combined tax rate between state and
federal at 6.58%. This would not include
any local or county level taxes, or use taxes.
Final Thoughts
I am not
opposed to eliminating either the state income tax combined with the corporate
tax or the state sales tax. I just looked at the raw numbers and wonder if
either is the best solution.
In 2013,
the revenue to the State of Missouri totaled $8,083 Million. The sources from
Personal income tax at 6% rate was $5,489 Million, accounting for 67.9% of the
total revenues. The Total revenue from Sales Tax for $1,872 Million at 4.4%,
accounting for 23.2% of the total revenue. Then the revenue from Corporate
Income Tax was $415 Million, which accounted for 5.1% of revenue. Since the
rates on corporate taxes are progressive and varied, it is harder to figure an
overall average.
Now to
remove the sales tax and leave to corporate level, the new personal income tax
would have to be around 8%. Even reducing or removing Corporate Tax rate, the
percentage would be 8.4% to remain revenue neutral.
In my
understanding of the Fair tax, they would generally open up the sales tax to
all end user items for goods and service. And then cap the maximum at 7% for
the state, and 10% for city and local rates. And use this new form to replace
the personal income tax, and the corporate tax codes.
The
biggest problem I have with this is determining an end user. For the
individual, this is easy, anything you purchase would be taxed. The problem is when
determining end user on businesses. That can be arbitrary, and could lead to shielding the purchase of personal use items under the umbrella of a business or non-profit
organization. Thus the state would have an interest in auditing purchases made
by all organizations. Therefore, not really decreasing the states mandate to
use force to maintain tax compliance.
In the CUT
Tax model, the state does not need a large collections body to enforce the fee.
Only a small monitoring group, which can project and analyze trends. Any discrepancies
from collection would either be from error, or fraud. And fraud can be
investigated by the local or state law enforcement departments, following the
constitutional guidelines long established for investigating criminal activity.
In
summary, I see this form of taxation as the best option for continuing the American
Ideal and culture, where technology is evolving on a rapid pace, and gives us
the better balance between personal privacy and public stewardship.
For more
information, please follow me on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/TheCUTTax,
My blog http://thecuttax.blogspot.com/,.
Or the
original CUT Tax eBook on Kindle direct. http://www.amazon.com/CUT-Tax-Jeffrey-Schaben-ebook/dp/B00F74SVB4/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1415980067&sr=8-16&keywords=the+cut+tax
