Reply #39: The states would never approve it. [View All]

Federal taxing authority derives from the 16th Amendment, which only permits the taxing of income from domestic citizens. Implementing a national sales tax would require a constitutional amendment, and you'd never get 38 states to go along with that.

People aren't going to magically come up with more money, so a 3% sales tax increase means a reduction in overall consumer spending (money that is currently going to other things will have to go to taxes). I don't normally pay much attention to this anti-tax argument, but it's valid in the case of sales taxes. When you increase the overall price of an item, you reduce the number of the items that will sell.

Many states are heavily dependent on sales taxes, and any downturn in sales will impact their state tax revenue. The states would, in essence, be giving a portion of their existing sale tax revenue to the federal government.

Some states might go along with that, perhaps a lot would, but not 38. And when we're talking about amendments, there's no difference between 37 and 1.