Tax Reform: FairTax or No Tax?
by activist Bonnie Hofer
Many of us long for the day when a simpler, more fair tax code will be put in place of the current incomprehensible behemoth which is currently in place. Sadly enough, the FairTax plan, with the complicated details of prebates and rebates may not be the answer, but may instead continue to allow the federal government to overspend and create just another form of complicated bureaucracy. The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with a progressive national retail sales tax. Different estimates have been thrown around as to what percent Americans would have to pay in order to replace the lost government revenue. Many of the proponents of the FairTax proposal claim that the magic number for the sales tax could be as low as 23%, while groups like FactCheck.Org claim that the tax would approach 34%.
According to Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, who is often referred to as the maverick Republican Congressman from Texas, there is an easier answer. He states simply we can achieve much needed tax reform by simply abolishing the income tax and replacing it with "nothing". When Americans first hear Ron Paul say this, they are skeptical the United States could just eliminate the income tax, but as Congressman Paul states, "Individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue". Cutting the budget by one-third would still leave the government with approximately $1.8 trillion dollars, or roughly the equivalent of the 2000 federal budget. In Congressman Paul's opinion, Congress does not need the current $2.7 trillion dollars collected from taxpayers each year and it is pointless to discuss tax reform, without addressing spending reform.
Having never voted for and unbalance budget or a tax increase, Paul has been honored as the "Taxpayer's Friend" for the tenth consecutive year. In order to eliminate the income tax, Paul acknowledges that Americans must first change what we perceive the role of government in our lives. Government cannot take care of us from cradle to grave and run a foreign policy empire if we want cut government spending.
SOURCES:
Ron Paul For Congress
Fact Check.org
Fair Tax.org
House.gov
Monday, November 19, 2007
Tax Reform: FairTax or No Tax?
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Naysayers railing against the FairTax become, ipso facto, defenders of the INCOME TAX system. Prof. Larry Kotlikoff believes that the current tax system IS bringing the country to nothing less than an "economic meltdown" by virtue of the invisibility of actual taxes paid. If Americans do not understand the true cost of their government, they're unlikely to hold Congress accountable - thus the enabling mechanism to continued profligate spending.
Even with the foregoing notwithstanding, do FairTax naysayers really believe:
• Workers love having their pay confiscated, hourly, through gov't withholding and don't mind getting their money back by involuntary servitude - to the tune of 50 hours/year (on average) - preparing an annual tax return?
• That certifying the number of persons in your family (annually, and, ancillarily, upon change in household) is an abrogation of our freedom - more intrusive and complex than filing a tax return every year subject to threats and intimidation by theIRS.
• It's better to have theIRS fishing through citizens' income transactions (complete with audits, interest, penalties, and threats against individuals, families, businesses as well as confiscation of their homes, property, and bank accounts) rather than - Gawd forbid - issuing a gov't check to an individual (while pretending that Social Security payments disbursement logistics really can't work for "prebates")?
• That an monthly advance tax rebate is the same thing as "being on the dole" ? (Only lobbyists, special interests, and business deserve "handouts" ? - the politician gets a payoff from a lobbyist, the lobbyist gets a payoff from its client, and the citizen gets higher taxes and/or prices that pay for it all.)
• "Hidden taxes" in higher prices are fine because they're not "taxes," per se? (Hey, forget that families are really paying business's costs for complying with a business income tax code - staff, consultants, submittals, etc.)
• It's far better to have a gargantuan tax collection "service" in Washington, than to have 50 decentralized, smaller, leaner state collection agencies collecting taxes from fewer sources?
• That the work by notable economists (paid tens of millions of $'s by Americans for Fair Taxation) doesn't carry weight because it was paid for by private funds instead of some gov't / quasi-gov't enterprise?
• That FairTax's backing by many economists doesn't carry any weight because (the Brookings') Wm Gale's testimony before the President's Commission on Tax Reform is - somehow - above all that?!
(NOTE: The Commission/Gale made up their own "consumption tax" requirements, as if that constituted a legitimate rebuke of the FairTax plan. Dr. Kotlikoff has requested - but never received - Gale's technical "modus operandi" which would definitively explain just how Gale's conclusions can be reconciled with Kotlikoff's well-documented technical work.
Let us work, together, to end the enslavement of the Tax Code and to restore Liberty to America's working families.
America's working families are paid because the companies they work for sell goods and services. Let's pay for government the way America's families are paid - when something is sold!
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