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Bill: Stop taxing food!
Details
Submitted by[?]: FJS Freedom, Justice, Sustainability
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: July 3823
Description[?]:
| Give the poor a break. If this passes we will propose a bill that adds revenue from income tax, and or makes modest spending cuts. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Sales tax on essential goods such as food and non-luxury clothing.
Old value:: 25
Current: 5
Proposed: 0
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 15:53:53, March 27, 2015 CET | From |  Great National Republican Guard | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Mr. Speaker, Our expansive welfare programmes already allow the poor to access food. They are not starving. Does the FJS know what funds these welfare programmes? We tax food because the wealthier classes consume more food per capita for their lavish dinner parties and other events. The wealthy consume more essential goods, and they waste the essential goods. When there is a lower tax, or no tax, they will buy more and their demand will already drive up the price; at the same time this happens, we won't have money to fund our expansive welfare programmes. What will happen, as a result, is that we will have expensive food and the poorer citizens won't be able to afford it. At least now, they get some of the money when the wealthy citizens buy excess goods, and the tax discourages the wealthy from buying too much excess, so that there can be enough left to go around for everyone. The FJS knows nothing about economics, especially Lodamese economics. -- Simon Landau, Finance Minister |
| Date | 16:48:59, March 27, 2015 CET | From | FJS Freedom, Justice, Sustainability | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Mr. Speaker, Perhaps people wouldn't need as much wellfare if food and clothing were not taxed so high. Jack Thrift FJS Finance Advisor |
| Date | 17:46:17, March 27, 2015 CET | From | Great National Republican Guard | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Mr. Speaker, I already showed how that is not the case. "We tax food because the wealthier classes consume more food per capita for their lavish dinner parties and other events. The wealthy consume more essential goods, and they waste the essential goods. When there is a lower tax, or no tax, they will buy more and their demand will already drive up the price" My party has more experience in Finance. We once listened to fiscal conservatives, and decided to cut taxes and spending; the result was that our GDP fell by 200 LOD per capita, and our Consumption rose by only 40 LOD per capita. Citizens are not spending most of their income; they are saving it. They can already afford their needs. -- |
| Date | 17:46:31, March 27, 2015 CET | From | Great National Republican Guard | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Simon Landau, Finance Minister |
| Date | 01:42:25, March 28, 2015 CET | From | People of Freedom (P.F) | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Mr. Speaker. There might as well be no government. Tree climbing frauds. Raven Valentinn Minister of Internal Affairs |
| Date | 02:56:54, March 28, 2015 CET | From | FJS Freedom, Justice, Sustainability | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Mr. Speaker, We see the lavish grommet meals of the rich, which are largely consumed in restaurants as being taxed as luxury goods anyway. We envision food purchased at grocery stores as being tax free. Jack Thrift FJS Finance Minister |
| Date | 03:35:17, March 28, 2015 CET | From | FJS Freedom, Justice, Sustainability | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | OOC: Pardon this real world example, if I am out of line; a thousand hail Marie's, mods please don't delete my account. But this is the best way I can think to articulate the point I'm trying to make. I don't know what nationality other players are. I live in the U.S., so I will use its tax system as an example (not to say it is ideal, because it sure as heck isn't). In the U.S., there is no federal sales tax, the federal government collects taxes in other ways. States, counties, and city governments may and often do collect sales tax, though some don't, Oregon for example. I live in a midsize city in a western state. My sales tax is about 7%, however food at the grocery store is not taxed. Soda or beer are, but not staples like vegetables, meats, milk, bread, and so forth. If you eat at a restaurant you still pay sales tax. In some states; I would argue more regressive states, food is taxed with everything else, but no more then 4-8%. A 25% tax would be considered by most to be very onerous and regressive, and would be very hard and the poor and even middle class, it would also hurt the economy quite a bit. I know of no state, province or nation anywhere that that imposes a 25% sales tax on food (or likely anything else). If there is a country like that I would guess they probably have little or no income tax. It would still be a very regressive system. |
| Date | 03:37:32, March 28, 2015 CET | From | FJS Freedom, Justice, Sustainability | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | OOC: Pardon this real world example, if I am out of line; a thousand hail Marie's, mods please don't delete my account. But this is the best way I can think to articulate the point I'm trying to make. I don't know what nationality other players are. I live in the U.S., so I will use its tax system as an example (not to say it is ideal, because it sure as heck isn't). In the U.S., there is no federal sales tax, the federal government collects taxes in other ways. States, counties, and city governments may and often do collect sales tax, though some don't, Oregon for example. I live in a midsize city in a western state. My sales tax is about 7%, however food at the grocery store is not taxed. Soda or beer are, but not staples like vegetables, meats, milk, bread, and so forth. If you eat at a restaurant you still pay sales tax. In some states; I would argue more regressive states, food is taxed with everything else, but no more then 4-8%. A 25% tax would be considered by most to be very onerous and regressive, and would be very hard and the poor and even middle class, it would also hurt the economy quite a bit. I know of no state, province or nation anywhere that that imposes a 25% sales tax on food (or likely anything else). If there is a country like that I would guess they probably have little or no income tax. It would still be a very regressive system. |
| Date | 05:21:40, March 28, 2015 CET | From | Communist Revolutionist Party | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Mr Speaker, I can't support the bill now,but if the nation goes the way we dream,dream in quotes..ha ha..then one day this is gonna be one of our agenda |
| Date | 05:46:02, March 28, 2015 CET | From | Great National Republican Guard | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | OOC: FJS, I'm not interested in your real world example. Our characters are playing in Lodamun. My characters can't read your OOC message. I'm doing roleplaying. The views of the characters in the game aren't necessarily the views of the players controlling them. I don't believe in most of what the GNRG supports. My characters will uphold their stance, regardless of what you tell players about the real world. It would be unrealistic for characters to suddenly switch their stance without a reason. Your OOC comment doesn't give our characters a reason to switch their stances. Provide an in-character reason, or just don't say anything, unless it's something that affects the gameplay itself; taxes don't affect the gameplay for players, only for characters, so keep the discussion between characters instead of players. |
| Date | 16:56:30, March 30, 2015 CET | From | FJS Freedom, Justice, Sustainability | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Mr. Speaker, We don't understand the Communist Revolution Partys objection to this bill. |
| Date | 17:37:46, March 30, 2015 CET | From | Great National Republican Guard | To | Debating the Stop taxing food! |
| Message | Mr. Speaker, The FJS never understands anything that makes sense. The CRP is voting against the bill now, but would support an abolition of sales tax on essential goods if the economy could handle it. It just doesn't make sense to abolish this tax in current times. -- Simon Landau, Finance Minister |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | |||||
| yes | Total Seats: 144 | |||||
| no |
Total Seats: 307 | |||||
| abstain |
Total Seats: 148 |
| Random fact: Moderation will not accept Cultural Protocol updates which introduce, on a significant scale, cultures which are likely to be insufficiently accessible to players. In particular, for all significant cultures in Particracy, it should be easy for players to access and use online resources to assist with language translation and the generation of character names. Moderation reserves the right to amend Cultural Protocols which are deemed to have introduced significant cultures that are not sufficiently accessible and which are not being actively role-played with. |
| Random quote: "Take our country back" - Conservative Republican campaign slogan for the 4690 Likatonian election |