9-9-9 plan

Cain has proposed the so-called "9-9-9 plan", which has been regarded as a "centerpiece" of his presidential campaign. This plan proposes replacing all current taxes with 9% business transactions tax; 9% personal tax rate, and a 9% federal sales tax. Cain has spoken about having designated 'empowerment zones' wherein a lower percentage, such as 3%, is paid instead. Taxes such as the payroll tax, capital gains tax, and the estate tax would be eliminated under his system. According to Cain, corporations would be able to deduct costs of goods sold (provided the inputs were made in America) and capital expenditures. Deductions, except charitable giving, would be eliminated. The federal sales tax would not apply to used goods.




Value added tax


A value added tax or value-added tax (VAT) is a form of consumption tax. From the perspective of the buyer, it is a tax on the purchase price. From that of the seller, it is a tax only on the "value added" to a product, material or service, from an accounting point of view, by this stage of its manufacture or distribution. The manufacturer remits to the government the difference between these two amounts, and retains the rest for themselves to offset the taxes they had previously paid on the inputs.
The "value added" to a product by a business is the sale price charged to its customer, minus the cost of materials and other taxable inputs. A VAT is like a sales tax in that ultimately only the end consumer is taxed. It differs from the sales tax in that, with the latter, the tax is collected and remitted to the government only once, at the point of purchase by the end consumer. With the VAT, collections, remittances to the government, and credits for taxes already paid occur each time a business in the supply chain purchases products.
Maurice Lauré, Joint Director of the French Tax Authority, the Direction générale des impôts, was first to introduce VAT on April 10, 1954, although German industrialist Dr. Wilhelm von Siemens proposed the concept in 1918. Initially directed at large businesses, it was extended over time to include all business sectors. In France, it is the most important source of state finance, accounting for nearly 50% of state revenues.

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Personal end-consumers of products and services cannot recover VAT on purchases, but businesses are able to recover VAT (input tax) on the products and services that they buy in order to produce further goods or services that will be sold to yet another business in the supply chain or directly to a final consumer. In this way, the total tax levied at each stage in the economic chain of supply is a constant fraction of the value added by a business to its products, and most of the cost of collecting the tax is borne by business, rather than by the state. Value added taxes were introduced in part because they create stronger incentives to collect than a sales tax does. Both types of consumption tax create an incentive by end consumers to avoid or evade the tax, but the sales tax offers the buyer a mechanism to avoid or evade the tax—persuade the seller that he (the buyer) is not really an end consumer, and therefore the seller is not legally required to collect it. The burden of determining whether the buyer's motivation is to consume or re-sell is on the seller, but the seller has no direct economic incentive to collect it. The VAT approach gives sellers a direct financial stake in collecting the tax, and eliminates the problematic decision by the seller about whether the buyer is or is not an end consumer.




Personal
A personal or individual income tax is levied on the total income of the individual (with some deductions permitted). It is often collected on a pay-as-you-earn basis, with small corrections made soon after the end of the tax year. These corrections take one of two forms: payments to the government, for taxpayers who have not paid enough during the tax year; and tax refunds from the government for those who have overpaid. Income tax systems will often have deductions available that lessen the total tax liability by reducing total taxable income. They may allow losses from one type of income to be counted against another. For example, a loss on the stock market may be deducted against taxes paid on wages.




Sales tax


A sales tax is a tax, usually paid by the consumer at the point of purchase, itemized separately from the base price, for certain goods and services. The tax amount is usually calculated by applying a percentage rate to the taxable price of a sale.
A portion of the sale may be exempt from the calculation of tax, because sales tax laws usually contain a list of exemptions. Laws governing the tax may require it to be included in the price (tax-inclusive) or added to the price at the point of sale.
Most sales taxes are collected from the buyer by the seller, who remits the tax to a government agency. Sales taxes are commonly charged on sales of goods, but many sales taxes are also charged on sales of services. Advantages that a sales tax generally has over other forms of taxation are that it is difficult to avoid, and simple to calculate and collect.