The Occasional Observer

I liked the discussion about consumption tax so much, I felt the need to post about it. I found this objective description of consumption tax on an economics site because I couldn't think of much If a downside. It turns out, there isn't much of one. Let's take a look:

Pros

• Increased tax base. As SheaHeyKid points out we can collect from organized crime and illegal aliens.
  
• Simplified tax code
  
• Discourage those on public assistance from buying luxury items (See Fredo's comment)
  
• Encourages savings, especially for those who should save
  
• Taxes what you take out rather than what you put in
  
• Good for the environment? Discourages disposable products?
  

Cons

• (Help me out here)
  

Here's a decent criticism of it. The author mostly criticizes the VAT, which is obviously a bad idea since many Europeans do it. He also misses the key point of exclusions for necessities.

Hey, who knows? Maybe we could even reduce the size of the IRS!