There was much ado about all the tax cutting in Paul Ryan's budget, oddly enough nobody is talking about the huge tax increase in it: the value added tax (VAT) or as he calls it the business consumption tax (to deceive who is actually going to pay for it).
The VAT is essentially a national sales tax, and like the national sales tax it is the end consumer that pays for it. The VAT is just a more efficient version of the sales tax since it creates a strong incentive for businesses to collect from the consumer.
The VAT, like any sales tax, is extremely regressive since the brunt of it hits the middle class and poor. So it is not like conservatives and the Chamber of Commerce don't like taxes, it's just that they don't like progressive taxes. They are more than happy to tax people who have trouble making ends meet as it is.
Here is the language directly from the House GOP's website:
TITLE VI: BUSINESS CONSUMPTION TAX
▫ Business Consumption Tax. Eliminates the current corporate income tax and replaces it with a Business Consumption Tax of 8.5 percent on goods and services. BCT calculated using the “subtraction method.”
- Businesses determine their tax liability by subtracting their total purchases (e.g. material costs from other businesses) from total sales.
- The BCT is imposed on this net receipts figure (i.e the firm’s value added) and paid to the Federal Government each reporting period.
http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/...
Essentially, they are getting rid of taxes on corporations and putting that cost on the backs of Middle Class America.
In fact the Center for Tax Justice found that the bottom 90% would pay MORE taxes under the Republican's plan - not less. And as you can see it is the poorest and most vulnerable among us that Ryan and his cronies seek to extract the biggest amount of flesh from to pay for his giveaway to the super wealthy:
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So Republicans ended up voting to raise - not lower - taxes on the vast majority of Americans. Unfortunately, the Democrats don't care to point out that their opponents want to raise taxes on the middle class. Instead, for whatever reason, they are ceding that argument to the Republicans.