Engine B: The Liquidity Pump
20% digital. 22% cash. The grey market priced out of existence.
One simple sales tax, already built into the price tag. No forms, no filing, no April 15th.
Instead of taxing your paycheck, the country collects when money is spent — and the tax is already included in the sticker price, so the price you see is the price you pay. A monthly rebate returns the tax on essentials like groceries and rent before you pay it, and a 50% surcharge on housing speculators keeps investors from buying up your neighborhood. The home you live in is exempt.
Consumption taxes leak — and punish the poor
Plain sales taxes invite cash evasion, spawn grey markets, and hit low-income families hardest. And when equity is taxed, capital historically flees into residential real estate, turning neighborhoods into tax shelters.
A behavioral defense suite, not a police state
Engine B pairs the 20% digital rate with behavioral economics: tax-inclusive sticker pricing, a cash surcharge exploiting loss-aversion, currency reform, and the Citizen's Dividend flipping the regressivity argument on its head.
Want to dig deeper?
The key numbers, at a glance
A 20% Standard Digital Sales Tax funds daily operations, a 22% Cash Surcharge collapses the grey market through loss-aversion, and a 50% Housing Protection Surcharge keeps speculative capital out of American neighborhoods.
Digital Rate
20%
All digital payment rails
Cash Rate
22%
Loss-aversion surcharge
Housing Surcharge
50%
Non-primary residential & investment land
Projected Revenue
$3.8T/yr
On $19T personal consumption
What exactly is broken today?
- High sales taxes traditionally drive transactions underground.
- Flat consumption taxes are regressive without an offset.
- Untaxed housing becomes the escape hatch for fleeing capital.
How the fix works, point by point
- Standard Digital Rate: 20% (credit, debit, crypto, prepaid — the unbanked are protected).
- Cash Surcharge: 22% — avoiding a penalty motivates harder than earning a discount.
- Housing Protection Surcharge: 50% on transfers of non-primary residential real estate and raw investment land. Primary residences exempt.
Tax-inclusive pricing (the Nudge)
Sticker prices must include the tax — a $100 item is listed at $120 on the shelf. This leverages salience: it reduces tax anger at the register and blurs the lines for black-market negotiation, making evasion less intuitive.
Currency reform
The $50 and $100 bills are removed from circulation. Paying $10,000 for a grey-market renovation in $20 bills is physically cumbersome — friction is the enforcement.
The Piggyback Protocol
States are offered a deal: abolish state income tax and ride a surcharge on the federal Sales Tax. Even at a combined 30%, middle-class effective rates fall below today's once Income Tax and FICA disappear.
What Would Your Raise Be?
See the Compensation Preservation Protocol (CPP) work for your own paycheck
The US average employer contribution is ≈ $15,000/year for family coverage — money you earn but never see in your paycheck.
Today
$50,000
+ $15,000 hidden premium
Your New Cash Wage
$65,000
an immediate $15,000 raise
Year 0 — Total Comp Freeze: the OTV certifies your Total Compensation Load at $65,000.
Year 1 — Mandatory Conversion: private premiums are abolished; the Fair Labor Standards Act makes the certified baseline your new minimum cash salary. Your employer’s costs don’t change a penny: $0 net.
The Wage Clawback Clause: an employer who pockets your $15,000 instead faces the Unjust Enrichment Tax — 100% of retained savings plus a 20% punitive surcharge, a $33,000 penalty. It is mathematically more expensive to steal the savings than to pay you.
More from the Shareholder Trust
- The Autopilot Thresholds
These rules only kick in above $29 million — and they can never creep down to you.
- The International Access Model
Foreign mega-companies pay for access to American customers — no more hiding in tax havens.
- The Legacy Savings Credit
Money you already paid taxes on will never be taxed again. Period.