The Biden administration’s new push to regulate highly popular AR-style pistols could net Uncle Sam billions in new tax revenue and rub out a small industry involved in the production of the firearms. [More]
It doesn't look like they've factored in enforcement costs...
"net Uncle Sam billions in new tax revenue and rub out a small industry involved in the production of the firearms."
ReplyDeleteIs economics like Aramaic to these people?
"We're going to make a lot of money and hamstring an industry. Woops, why did the money stop coming in?"
This is not about debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. We have compliance numbers, or maybe more like "wild assed guesses", from four states and going back to at least 1989 in California's case. And it ain't any where near 100%
ReplyDeleteIn other words, you can't just multiply the projected number of new NFA "firearms" by $200 per new tax stamp and come up with a projection of revenue for a fiscal year. You would also have to reduce the windfall by the demonstrated rates of non compliance and spread it out by how long BATFE would take (years?) to cope with the inevitable backlog of NFA registrations added to a system that already takes in the neighborhood of a year to issue a new stamp.
So the current projections being thrown about make about as much sense as imagining that a kilo of pot nets anyone the "projected street price" often announced after a DEA bust.
Oh, wait! That would be the same folks doing the math.