Josh Barro has a piece in favor of a Value Added Tax in Bloomberg. A VAT is a tax levied on business sales minus their inputs or costs, so all companies ‘adding value’ along the production chain pay the tax, but it is collected at the sale of the final consumer good. If you buy a sweater for $50 and the VAT is 10%, $5 of the $50 is the VAT.
In my book Balancing the Budget is a Progressive Priority, I didn’t suggest that we add a VAT, but I do think that it will take a substantial increase in tax revenue as a percent of GDP to ever have a balanced budget again. I suggest 21% of GDP, which is about 3 percentage points higher than the 40 year average, a level that is doable, but won’t be easy. Would a VAT be useful to consider? A key question, and a few thoughts.
- Is the VAT viewed as a supplement to our current system of taxation (payroll taxes, personal and corporate income, excise taxes) or a replacement of some portion? I asked Josh Barro via twitter for his views, and he said he viewed the VAT as supplementing our current federal taxation regime, shown below. Individual income taxes and payroll taxes are the largest source of federal revenue, with corporate and excise taxes being much smaller (in percent of GDP terms).
