Would a National Sales Tax dedicated to Healthcare that employers pay make sense?

Question

Would a National Sales Tax dedicated to paying that portion that employers pay for their employees who are citizens or permanent alien residents who are employed in the United States make sense? Would it give incentive for the employers to stay in the United States instead of going over seas? Would it not give a greater base to draw upon to support Social Security and Medicare because of the increased employment here at home? And with anything that is left over shouldn't it be applied to paying down the National debt?

Answer 1

Oh great! A 15% national sales tax to take employers off the hook even further! Not only would such a tax decimate the poor it would open up a huge black market in untaxed goods by folks trying to avoid the tax. Great idea -- let Wally World off the hook for using Medicaid as their healthcare plan and stick it to the working stiff.

Answer 2

Let me see if I understand. You propose abolishing the employer part of SS and Medicare and replacing it with a national sales tax. This would be an incentive to US employers to operate within the US instead of in foreign countries.

From the taxpayers' perspective, this will increase his tax burden, roughly shifting the employer SS and Medicare contribution onto him via sales tax. Retired persons with low income will be particularly disadvantaged.

From the employer's perspective it might be a benefit. It would be worth studying how much this would impact the trend to send jobs overseas. I think most employers would just pocket the difference and still send jobs overseas as a means to increase profits. If an employer had to buy goods subject to the sales tax, there may be in fact no benefit to the employer.

Collecting a national sales tax is going to cost money and create more government infrastructure. It will be hard to predict if the revenue will be sufficient to cover the SS and Medicare funding needs.

If you are in fact proposing that the health insurance provided by employers be abolished, that makes no sense as employers are not now required to provide any health insurance at all. So, I don't think you meant that, you were referring to abolishing the employers part of payroll taxes.

Answer 3

You would be taking from the employees as a tax to pay their own health care the employer is paying now. That would mean adding about 300-500 per month per person as a sales tax people would quit buying and the companies would have another tax to collect and send in. The laws wouldn't match any state so you would need to write all new software and retrain all employees on the new laws.
Also a unfair tax on the elderly and poor since they spend a greater percentage of income than people saving for retirement.
Soon you would have exemptions for food, clothing, medicine, property taxes, mortgage interest so you could earn 30K and only 2K would be taxable sales so your sales tax rate would need to be 1000 percent on the few things you paid taxes on.

Answer 4

I don't understand. You want employers to stop paying our insurance premiums, and instead you want me to pay an additional 4 or 5% on everything I purchase?!?!!?

And, somehow this will prevent companies from hiring oversees?

Also, if this tax if for health insurance, what does it have to do social security or the national debt? You don't mean that they would just pick some wild number and charge it an then end up with too much money?!?! Seems like if the money were collected for health care, the amount would be calculated to cover the actual costs of healthcare and not more.

I'm confused.

Answer 5

A sales tax implies that you pay a tax on something you purchase. Wouldn't that be an unfair weighting of tax towards manufacturing companies (that must buy raw materials) compared to service companies (that may only buy office supplies).

Answer 6

Ya!! your brilliant!! Lets TAX, TAX, TAX!!! I agree you should steall from me, so you can give it to someone else!! I really am unhappy that the government takes only 50% of every penny i earn!! It should be more like 100% i mean if the government would just take all my earnings and feed and clothe me, keep me safe and healthy.. I would love to be a SLAVE!! get a brain you idiot!!