If you limit how much the gov’t can vacuum from your pockets, then you create a class of people impervious to taxes. Let’s say we take a flat sales tax structure and then implement caps…if you spend over 1M…you pay nothing in addition. Then those people in the 1M+ spending category would spend freely above that amount. That means the richer you are, the less you would pay in taxes as a percentage of your spending. This means the full tax burden winds up on everyone south of the cap which means it is a regressive tax. Nothing breeds more social discord than turning everyone not wealthy into serfs.

While its true the wealthy do not necessarily utilize gov’t services like highways more, they have in fact benefited from the gov’t structure that allowed their businesses or income to reach those levels. Maintaining a flat/moderately progressive tax structure has been a major part of maintaining peace and stability necessary to foster business regardless of how much high income people lobby to change that fact.

The issue I have is that its a tax shift and increase rolled into a sorry marketing ploy as a tax elimination rather than a real reduction in taxes. People who previously bought a Lexus, Mercedes, Ferrari, etc paid the 6-8% sales tax as well as very high ad valorem taxes based on the value of the car. This bill essentially still generates that revenue and much more by taxing people who deal in cars in the 20k and less arena. I would have seen a tax savings when I bought my Infiniti but that wasn’t a big factor in my decision. I wasn’t happy to see the $450 ad valorem bill three months later but it’s cost of ownership of a shiny new car. Was I unfairly taxed b/c I wanted a luxury car? I highly doubt it b/c the guy buying a Ford Focus pays the exact same sales tax rate and millage rate on his car if he got it from a dealer.

Cars can be a necessity (given GA’s poor public transportation and build the highway and they will come attitude) but can you really say a 50-100k Mercedes is a necessity for transportation? Giving a person who buys the $50k Lexus a 2k(3% effective tax rate) discount simply b/c his car was more expensive seems rather counterintuitive. The guy who buys a 10k used Honda pays $700 now which is a full 7% of the price regardless of if they go private party or to a dealer now. The one guy per year who buys a Rolls in GA will get a tax savings of $26,000 (effective tax rate 0.375%) just on sales tax. Ad valorem would likely be a 5 figure savings as well. I don’t think taxes should cause significant social engineering but creating a cap just makes the tax regressive (much like social security).

If a one-time tax is to be applied to any vehicle, it should be for the full price of the vehicle according to the new-car sticker price and/or the used-car Blue Book value. To me, that would be a fair tax solution *iff this bill is applied. For a state struggling with debt, this is no time to reduce revenue which, I believe, the long-run result would be.

My vote would be to stick with the “Birthday Tax.”

*if and only if

I’m a fair tax guy myself but I’m just tired of seeing govt lately try to find every avenue they can to take more and more and more from us. I’m sick of it. When the income tax was begun the bill stated that they would only be taking 1% of the top earners pay. This is where they started. Now look. We are up to 40% of your pay just to the Feds and then the state takes their share, then the local school district rapes you with enourmous property taxes, every purchase you make at a store is taxed, and on and on and on. At some point we need to cap it regardless of what is percieved at “fair for the little guy”. We have to begin to starve the beast to some extent or it just keeps growing and growing.

Thats my point and where I’m coming from on this. I’m just sick of govt consuming more and more of our money that WE THE PEOPLE earn, not the govt. They don’t do anything at all to earn it. They just take with force.