Addressing one of the points in the article, home sales will not be taxed directly. If you realize a capital gain on the sale of your home in excess of the exemption amount ($250,000 for a single person, $500,000 for a person married filing jointly), that capital gain may be part of your investment income subject to the new 3.8% tax on investment income for those making exceeding certain income limits. As for repeal, that will not happen until 2013 at the earliest. Obama can veto any repeal until January 2013, assuming that the repealers do not obtain veto-proof majorities (I don't think any November GOP wave will be THAT big). There is one narrow road to repeal in 2013: 1) Elect a pro-repeal President in November 2012, and 2)...

Senior citizens or near-retirees who have been paying into the system out of their incomes their whole working lives would scream bloody murder. You'd have to compensate them somehow upon the conversion to a consumption tax.

Also, at rates like those discussed the fraud would be unbelievable. The underground economy would expand exponentially in response to such a tax.

We have also all seen the power of the realtor lobby in the past couple of years. There is now way such a tax could ever be levied upon home sales. It would destroy loan-to-value ratios if it was included in mortgages.