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APT Tax

Just for clarification the APT tax does not replace local property taxes but could possibly do so at some point on a state by state basis. The tax would be implemented in stages and would work at a much lower rate than current taxes because it would be spread out over a much larger base. One way of looking at it is that, "The APT tax can therefore be viewed as a universal brokerage fee levied by the state to finance the panoply of services it provides. Most important among these are the maintenance of those institutions that protect and facilitate the acquisition and exchange of property rights. Like all brokerage fees, the APT tax establishes a spread between the buy and sell price of every transaction." Link to short overview containing this quote by Forbes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterj...tomated-payment-transaction-tax/#2fe4f7da4301

Another short overview and critique can be found here: http://blog.heartland.org/2014/05/rethinking-taxation-the-automated-payment-transaction-tax/

Here's the executive summary from Dr. Feige's 2005 presentation to the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. The link to the complete 19 page paper is here:
https://www.scribd.com/document/25299549/Feige-APT-Presentation-to-Tax-Reform-Panel-2005

"I propose the replacement of our current system of individual and corporate income, sales, excise, capital gains, import and export duties, gift and estate taxes with a single comprehensive “revenue neutral” Automated Payment Transaction (APT) tax. The APT tax consists of a flat rate tax levied on all voluntary transactions. The total volume of transactions represents the broadest conceivable tax base and therefore requires the lowest conceivable marginal tax rate. Since the efficiency (misallocation) costs of a tax system tend to rise geometrically with the marginal tax rate, a massive reduction in tax rates can save an estimated $300 billion of misallocation costs associated with the current tax system.The APT tax is automatically assessed and collected when transactions are routinely settled through the electronic technology of the bank/payments clearing system with no deductions, exemptions, or exclusions. The APT tax also imposes an automatically collected tax on cash as it enters and leaves the banking system. All income and information tax returns are eliminated as taxes are digitally assessed and collected by the financial equivalent of the E-Z pass that is now used to speed traffic through a toll booth system on highways. The annual savings in compliance and administrative costs are estimated to be $200 billion per year.Unlike the “Fair Tax” or “National Sales Tax” proposals which are highly regressive, the flat rate APT tax introduces progressivity through the tax base since the total volume of transactions includes all asset transactions involving exchanges of titles to property. The wealthy carry out a disproportionate share of these asset exchanges and therefore bear a disproportionate burden of the tax despite its flat rate structure. The perceived fairness, even handedness and simplicity of the APT tax will greatly reduce tax evasion, which the IRS estimates to total $325 billion per year.Like all taxes, the APT tax creates new distortions which must be weighed against the benefits obtained by scrapping the current tax system. Scrapping the present tax system tax promises potential benefits estimated at$825 billion annually. The proposed APT tax is simple, comprehensible, fair and efficient, with minimal administrative and compliance costs. The burden of proof therefore rests with APT tax opponents who must demonstrate that its costs exceed the $825 billion of potential annual benefits."
 
You will have to point them out to me as I don't understand how an everyday citizen will do so. Will you travel to a different state to save $0.02 cents on your grocery bill? Fine, your state will probably make the difference up on your fuel bill. Plan on saving $1.60 by purchasing some large expensive item online from a low tax state? Ok, but the extra $350 freight bill doesn't seem to make much sense to me. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm honestly not following what you are trying to relay.

Local taxes, as in property taxes will still be levied locally. I can't give you definitive answers as to how the state tax would work as there is no current mechanism or constitutional amendment to allow it at this time.

Legally, I am required to calculate and pay sales tax on any item I buy online where the store doesn't automatically charge it. I am probably not alone on this. Keep in mind, it's not me trying to save the 2 cents, but the vendor. And they are trying to save it for thousands or millions of transactions.

Grocery stores margins are already about a penny per dollar. If they could move their bank to a low tax state, they would do it in a second. Every penny counts. If they could double their profits by changing where they bank, I can't see a reason why they wouldn't do it. There is a reason why Delaware has far more corporations than people.

I also don't buy the part about offshores being solved by penalties. That doesn't work. The IRS has a good number of people already working FATCA, and it's not really made that much of a dent. Sure, they had an influx of compliance when there was forgiveness being offered, but now it's a grind with not much to show for it.

It's not the everyday citizen you would have to watch out for. It's the corporations. They deal with so much money, that saving a fraction of a cent on every transaction, would be worth it. Unless they were going to charge me to move money from savings to checking, or the inverse, then hell yeah, I'm banking in Tunisia. OK, probably not Tunisia, since we have a tax treaty with them, but the point stands.
 
Legally, I am required to calculate and pay sales tax on any item I buy online where the store doesn't automatically charge it. I am probably not alone on this. Keep in mind, it's not me trying to save the 2 cents, but the vendor. And they are trying to save it for thousands or millions of transactions.

Grocery stores margins are already about a penny per dollar. If they could move their bank to a low tax state, they would do it in a second. Every penny counts. If they could double their profits by changing where they bank, I can't see a reason why they wouldn't do it. There is a reason why Delaware has far more corporations than people.

I also don't buy the part about offshores being solved by penalties. That doesn't work. The IRS has a good number of people already working FATCA, and it's not really made that much of a dent. Sure, they had an influx of compliance when there was forgiveness being offered, but now it's a grind with not much to show for it.

It's not the everyday citizen you would have to watch out for. It's the corporations. They deal with so much money, that saving a fraction of a cent on every transaction, would be worth it. Unless they were going to charge me to move money from savings to checking, or the inverse, then hell yeah, I'm banking in Tunisia. OK, probably not Tunisia, since we have a tax treaty with them, but the point stands.

Ok, let's work with your example. Your local grocery store in made-up zip code 56993 (identified in the system as CA-XYZ8270-56993) banks in another state - a simple solution would be to tie the state and possibly even a local portion back to the zip code. It's all electronic transfers so it happens instantly and without any need for input. The IRS can focus on any cheaters since they no longer have to worry about processing all those returns.

Same thing with the offshore scenario, while I agree there is always incentive to cheat it doesn't make a lot of sense if set up as envisioned. They have to transfer the money from where it's collected (and pay the fee) or switch it to cash (and pay 2.5x the fee) before getting it out of the country. No foreign banks will be accepting cash without a fee being assessed at their end because they certainly won't be paying fees out of their pocket in any subsequent transaction so anyone smuggling cash out is paying 5x the normal fee due to paying an extra penalty at each end which is a pretty powerful disincentive all by itself. (Aside - the 2.5x cash penalty is genius and almost magically welcomes drug dealers and other criminals who currently avoid paying taxes into the tax base by default because that fee will have to be paid when the money gets laundered several times before they can use it.)

Any money taken offshore can either sit or be invested in foreign markets by the corporation or foreign bank but it can't get invested in US markets unless it starts paying fees again which currently doesn't happen. If they participate in our market they will be paying tax by default. This drops the incentive considerably but I do agree with you that there will be plenty trying to cheat the system but it won't be as many or as bad as now.
 
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Simply put, yes, Dr. Feige appears to have thought this out and tried to account for everything possible. Tax evasion is covered in Section 5.4 if you have time to look into it.

...........

"Technological innovations such as the creation of anonymous forms of E-cash (digital cash) that represent a private digital substitute for the government’s present monopoly of issuing currency can raise collection problems even for an APT system. Such E-cash could accumulate and simply be transferred from party to party without returning frequently to the banking system. If anonymous private digital cash is permitted to substitute freely for government paper currency, it can function as a tax evasion vehicle. Private digital cash also deprives taxpayers of annual seigniorage earnings of the Federal Reserve that are now returned to the US Treasury. Given these concerns it behooves the government to issue its own E-cash that would benefit from the natural network externalities that now accrue to paper legal tender. Under the APT system, the creation of private inside money designed to evade taxes would be illegal and treated as would be any attempt to counterfeit legal tender."
Hmmm. So crypto-currencies like bitcoin would be banned? I'm not sure that would fly with many people. Bitcoin is more suited to a "buy and hold" commodity than as a currency (its constantly appreciating value and the need to pay transaction fees to the miners see to that). Of course, this paper was written in 2000 and the author couldn't have foreseen this development.

BTW I went through the paper. The author is assuming that transactions would drop by up to 50% post-BAM so he doubled the tax rate. He also proposes that cash deposits and withdrawals be taxed at a much higher 2% to take into account the number of times cash changes hands before being deposited.
 
Ok, let's work with your example. Your local grocery store in made-up zip code 56993 (identified in the system as CA-XYZ8270-56993) banks in another state - a simple solution would be to tie the state and possibly even a local portion back to the zip code. It's all electronic transfers so it happens instantly and without any need for input. The IRS can focus on any cheaters since they no longer have to worry about processing all those returns.

Um, not sure how you are going to identify who is or is not cheating without information reporting. While the IRS is already shutting down return processing centers, since 80 plus percentage of the returns last year were digital, so this savings is already happening.

Same thing with the offshore scenario, while I agree there is always incentive to cheat it doesn't make a lot of sense if set up as envisioned. They have to transfer the money from where it's collected (and pay the fee) or switch it to cash (and pay 2.5x the fee) before getting it out of the country. No foreign banks will be accepting cash without a fee being assessed at their end because they certainly won't be paying fees out of their pocket in any subsequent transaction so anyone smuggling cash out is paying 5x the normal fee due to paying an extra penalty at each end which is a pretty powerful disincentive all by itself. (Aside - the 2.5x cash penalty is genius and almost magically welcomes drug dealers and other criminals who currently avoid paying taxes into the tax base by default because that fee will have to be paid when the money gets laundered several times before they can use it.)

Any money taken offshore can either sit or be invested in foreign markets by the corporation or foreign bank but it can't get invested in US markets unless it starts paying fees again which currently doesn't happen. If they participate in our market they will be paying tax by default. This drops the incentive considerably but I do agree with you that there will be plenty trying to cheat the system but it won't be as many or as bad as now.

In a country without a tax treaty with the US, who is going to enforce US tax law? They wouldn't take Cash because of laws they don't have to adhere to? I'm not seeing that happening.

Apple already uses all sorts of tricks to lower their tax burden. By moving all of their payroll to a non-transasctional tax location, they could save billions more.
 
Hmmm. So crypto-currencies like bitcoin would be banned? I'm not sure that would fly with many people. Bitcoin is more suited to a "buy and hold" commodity than as a currency (its constantly appreciating value and the need to pay transaction fees to the miners see to that). Of course, this paper was written in 2000 and the author couldn't have foreseen this development.

BTW I went through the paper. The author is assuming that transactions would drop by up to 50% post-BAM so he doubled the tax rate. He also proposes that cash deposits and withdrawals be taxed at a much higher 2% to take into account the number of times cash changes hands before being deposited.

Yes, bitcoin most likely becomes a novelty if the APT tax gets adopted. As you say, it's more a commodity than a currency at this point anyway but it still might be used on the dark web even after a new tax plan went through.

Do you now think Dr. Feige's doubling of the tax rate is enough or do you still feel that transactions will drop by more than the 50% provided for by the author?

I love the 2.5x cash penalty! It helps incorporate current criminals and tax evaders into the tax pool by default and discourages the transport of cash out of the country.

The more I look at this the more I wonder if it can really be adopted by a corrupt congress beholden to special interests and lobbyists? If not, if the political will isn't there, what's stopping the fed from implementing this at any time they want? All money flows through the fed at some point and once adopted it would force politicians to adjust and adopt it as an official policy.
 
Um, not sure how you are going to identify who is or is not cheating without information reporting. While the IRS is already shutting down return processing centers, since 80 plus percentage of the returns last year were digital, so this savings is already happening.



In a country without a tax treaty with the US, who is going to enforce US tax law? They wouldn't take Cash because of laws they don't have to adhere to? I'm not seeing that happening.

Apple already uses all sorts of tricks to lower their tax burden. By moving all of their payroll to a non-transasctional tax location, they could save billions more.

I'm not an IRS agent but I do know the IRS has years of digital records for every entity that's reported taxes. If your grocery store has been doing millions of dollars of business over the last 10 years and suddenly drops it will throw up some red flags. Are they cheating now with 30% rates? Why do you feel so strongly that the incentive to cheat will be so much stronger with a reduced 0.35% rate?

Offshore banks won't be enforcing our tax laws but they won't accept your $100 dollar bill for $100, it will only be worth $98 to them because they know they have to pay the 2.5x penalty when they try to use it. The penalty is built in at both ends.

All companies use tricks to reduce their tax bills. The best way to combat that is to reduce loopholes with a tax like the APT tax that has no loopholes.
In your example of an offshore payroll location the money still has to come to the workers sometime right? As soon as it does it starts getting taxed. It gets taxed when it comes in, it gets taxed again when the employees pay their mortgages, buy food, buy gas, pay bills etc. It gets taxed again when the stores they buy from pay their suppliers or service their startup debt. It gets taxed again when it goes to a bank and it gets taxed again when the bank sends it to the fed.

Another easy way to stop your offshore payroll scenario? Require all companies with US employees or even doing business in the US to utilize a US based bank or choose from a list of approved foreign banks that have agreed to follow US tax and accounting regulations for accounts doing business in the US.
 
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Do you now think Dr. Feige's doubling of the tax rate is enough or do you still feel that transactions will drop by more than the 50% provided for by the author?
Since banks and other financial institutions are the biggest day traders and won't allow an APT, this is a moot question. However, assuming that it got through, the potential drop could be much more than 50%.

I hadn't thought of this before bu other than crypto currencies, the "Ripple" network (https://ripple.com/) has the potential to take a lot of day trading "off the grid" altogether. It is a distributed ledger system that keeps track of who owes whom. You can set up a private network of nodes that has nothing to do with the rest of the ripple network and keep all trades secret.
 
Wouldn't there be an awful lot of upside for any "Ripple" network big loser to talk to the IRS rather than meet a huge call that would bankrupt them? White collars snitches aren't hard to find when the ship starts sinking.
 
Wouldn't there be an awful lot of upside for any "Ripple" network big loser to talk to the IRS rather than meet a huge call that would bankrupt them? White collars snitches aren't hard to find when the ship starts sinking.
I doubt that this is how it works. This is not the same as a margin call that could take days or weeks to occur (and thus not need APT avoidance). I'm pretty sure that a day trader would not be permitted to make any trades while his account was in negative territory.
 
Just spending 15 minutes brainstorming, I came up with several ways to avoid this tax altogether.

For instance: Some foreign bank or entity buys 10,000,000 shares of Microsoft stock and then issues 10,000,000 individual securities backed by the shares of Microsoft. One security would entitle the holder to redeem one share of Microsoft stock. I sell the securities at purchase price plus the .07% tax. Traders then buy the 10,000,000 securities, paying slightly more because they know they'll only have to pay once versus staying and trading in the US market. Because of the one for one nature of the stock to securities, the securities would have whatever value the stock does. The actual shares just sit there, while the securities are traded on the foreign market not subject to the US tax.
 
I doubt that this is how it works. This is not the same as a margin call that could take days or weeks to occur (and thus not need APT avoidance). I'm pretty sure that a day trader would not be permitted to make any trades while his account was in negative territory.

I guess as long as it's one of those illegal fund networks that always makes money no matter what the market does no user would ever have a reason to snitch about it and your money is probably safer there than in a legal longer-term investment where you will only make 10% or so.
 
Just spending 15 minutes brainstorming, I came up with several ways to avoid this tax altogether.

For instance: Some foreign bank or entity buys 10,000,000 shares of Microsoft stock and then issues 10,000,000 individual securities backed by the shares of Microsoft. One security would entitle the holder to redeem one share of Microsoft stock. I sell the securities at purchase price plus the .07% tax. Traders then buy the 10,000,000 securities, paying slightly more because they know they'll only have to pay once versus staying and trading in the US market. Because of the one for one nature of the stock to securities, the securities would have whatever value the stock does. The actual shares just sit there, while the securities are traded on the foreign market not subject to the US tax.

Just spending 1 second on your scenario lets me know you need to spend at least 2 or 3xlonger on it if you think the tax is being avoided altogether.
If your scenario entity had bought the stock this morning with an APT tax in place we can see that they would have given the US taxpayers $3,045,000 in taxes and injected $837,000,000 into our economy. Of course the US seller also has to pay an identical tax so our tax coffers would actually see $6,090,000 which isn't too bad given the nefarious designs the foreign entity has on cheating the system out of taxes. There might be some added brokerage costs of course with even more tax accrued but let's keep this simple and assume all fees were waived due to the size of the trade.

On behalf of the American people please thank your foreign entity for me. They've taken a long term investment in the volatile tech sector which should gain US investors increased returns due to decreased volatility. Their foreign exchange will help take further volatility out of the market and no US investor can use their exchange without paying fees at either end when they take money overseas and return. Some other country can raise their taxes, cut their social spending programs or increase their deficits when their stock market needs bailed out due to rampant speculation, bubbles and deregulation for a change. MAGA!
 
"Phase III: A mechanism could be established, probably requiring a Constitutional amendment, where an entity controlled by Congress, would collect additional taxes under the APT system to fund all state budgets allowing the elimination of state income, sales, and excise taxes as well as the public school portion of the local property tax.

There may be a small upward rate adjustment required to accommodate Phase III. However, the possibility exists that the multiplier effects of Phases I and II will generate more than enough revenue to incorporate Phase III."

It may not be perfect and it may not be popular with day traders or foreign investors but the minimal amount levied on each transaction will keep long term investors happy and ridding the market of some of the manipulation would be a good thing. I'm certainly no expert but I haven't seen a better proposal yet. I'd love to hear about any that anyone else wants to discuss and compare to the APT tax.

I can't say I know enough to have an informed opinion on whether APT would be an improvement on the current tax system (though the current tax system is screwed up enough that it wouldn't be that hard to improve on it). I see that the people proposing this realize that their idea to use it to replace state taxes would require a constitutional amendment. However, I think such an amendment would have no chance of passing. I simply don't see the states (and their ratification is necessary to pass the amendment) being willing to turn over their taxing authority to the federal government.
 
I can't say I know enough to have an informed opinion on whether APT would be an improvement on the current tax system (though the current tax system is screwed up enough that it wouldn't be that hard to improve on it). I see that the people proposing this realize that their idea to use it to replace state taxes would require a constitutional amendment. However, I think such an amendment would have no chance of passing. I simply don't see the states (and their ratification is necessary to pass the amendment) being willing to turn over their taxing authority to the federal government.

It's definitely an improvement on what we have as far as being fairer and better for the majority of the population. Add in the fact that foreign investors are now helping to foot the bill and criminals who have avoided taxes for years are now paying too. Lobbyists and special interests aren't buying tax breaks and we can actually fund programs like social security and healthcare. What's not to like? I'm sure there are a ton of small issues to be ironed out but the concept is sound.

I'm not sure that we are on the same page where it comes to state taxes, moving to the APT tax doesn't take any powers away from the state at all. I feel like you think the feds are going to step in and decide state taxes, that is not the plan at all. States can continue to levy local property taxes and even income & sales tax like now if they want but how will your state keep businesses and employees paying a 30% tax when they can relocate next door and pay 100x less? Rather than setting state income tax rates & sales tax rates the state legislators simply come up with their budget numbers, coordinate with the federal APT authority and come up with a percentage to add to the federal APT tax that will get sent to the state. By the time this would happen we would have several years of federal APT data to go by and the accountants could figure it out.
 
I guess as long as it's one of those illegal fund networks that always makes money no matter what the market does no user would ever have a reason to snitch about it and your money is probably safer there than in a legal longer-term investment where you will only make 10% or so.
This doesn't make any sense. Were you talking about a day trader who borrowed from their stock broker and lost? If not then why would they have to choose between meeting "a huge call that would bankrupt them" or "snitching"?
 
? Any investor/criminal using an illegal "Ripple" network for tax evasion might have cause to leverage their illegal activity into a plea bargain against the provider and other users of the network at any time. To get out of unrelated drug charges perhaps or under questioning from a special prosecutor in a Russian collusion case.
 
? Any investor/criminal using an illegal "Ripple" network for tax evasion might have cause to leverage their illegal activity into a plea bargain against the provider and other users of the network at any time. To get out of unrelated drug charges perhaps or under questioning from a special prosecutor in a Russian collusion case.
:confused: Now you are making even less sense. When did trading stock securities on the ripple network (which BTW is perfectly legal - banks use it) become a drug charge or a Russian collusion case?

I was beginning to think that there might be some merit in an APT but this sort of babbling shows that "you got nothing".
 
psionl0 said:
I hadn't thought of this before bu other than crypto currencies, the "Ripple" network (https://ripple.com/) has the potential to take a lot of day trading "off the grid" altogether. It is a distributed ledger system that keeps track of who owes whom. You can set up a private network of nodes that has nothing to do with the rest of the ripple network and keep all trades secret.

Wouldn't that still indicate legal ownership of the assets changing, and so at least in principle such trades could be traceable?
 
Wouldn't that still indicate legal ownership of the assets changing, and so at least in principle such trades could be traceable?
Not if all that is being traded is claims on shares (see simonxlong's post). Like bitcoin, the only things that are public record are wallet to wallet transfers. How tightly your name is bound to a wallet depends on what actions you take to disassociate your name from your wallet.

Note that currently, wallet to wallet transactions are not illegal. It seems that part of making APT work involves cracking down on barter and the trade of IOUs.
 

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