No one on the anti-gun side cares about the money from NFA taxes or the revenue it produces, per se. They only care about the NFA taxes because the taxes are integral to the NFA, and the NFA allows more gun control. I defy you to find any anti-gunner who would cry if all title II guns were banned, resulting in less revenue going to the government. Anyways, the money from NFA taxes goes into the general fund, not to the NFA Branch or the ATF at large. I'm not sure if the NFA branch even effectively breaks even from the taxes they collect.Dad24GreatKids wrote:It's more likely to pass if they retain the $200 tax. I hope it passes as is, but politicians normally hate to give up a revenue stream. I'm just speculating, but I bet they would generate more revenue by passing this bill and reducing the tax to $100. They'd surely make up the difference just on added volume. What they give up is the tracking mechanism.
The "tracking mechanism" (the NFRTR) is integral to the NFA. You can't have a taxation scheme that is based on the transfer or making of an object without some way to verify which specific object has been transferred or made.