What does Herman Cain's 999 scheme do to seniors and those on pensions, fixed income? It shafts them. Totally. During your working lifetime, you pay taxes on your income. You build up pensions, stocks, and other assets, generally using taxable income to do so (in other words, you paid the tax... the rest is YOUR money fair and square), except for a little that is tax free (401K, etc, tho most taxes on those are actually only deferred not eliminated). OK, now you are a senior or disabled and living off of that income. It's mostly tax free because you ALREADY PAID. Sounds fair, right? Sure does to me.
Now what will happen in 999 is that everything you BUY with that limited income will be taxed AGAIN, at 9%, PLUS state and local sales taxes. So this plan is an incredible shaft to seniors, except those who are so rich they are earning millions per year even though they are "retired". For those on fixed incomes, which is most Americans who worked during their younger years and who are now or will be retired, this plan will ScREw YoU to the wall big-time! But if somebody loses in the zero-sum tax game, somebody must win. If the corporations and upper class support this scheme, it's because it does exactly what the conservatives say they most hate: it re-distributes enormous quantities of wealth from the middle and lower earners, retirees, and disabled, to the most powerful and dangerous of us.
One thing nobody seems to be mentioning is that this plan does not REPLACE local sales taxes with a federal tax. If it did, your city, county and state would be bankrupt. No roads would get fixed, no schools operated, no buses running, no cops, no firemen... the Federal government does not do those jobs. Local government does. So we're talking about an ADDITIONAL sales tax. If you now pay 6%, you will pay 15%.
So there are the usual two groups of people who support silly plans like this. One is those who will benefit. And the other is those who are stupid.
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