Durn near anything would be better than the current cluster——. I could live with the fair tax quite easily although I prefer the simplicity of a flat tax.
The flat tax is an improvement over the graduated income tax, but it would not produce the windfall in tax revenue that the Fair Tax would (Without any additional burden to the American Taxpayer I might add.) Most people who discuss taxes generally get it wrong because they confuse taxes with tax collection. Under any system, no matter how you structure it, the end consumer pays the tax. It is built into the cost off the goods or service. If there were no taxes, the end price would be lower. When you buy a car, the taxes burden of everyone involved in its finance and production are built into the final price, all of the taxable elements along the way from the shareholders dividend, to the component suppliers to the people who build and sell it. The taxes they pay, all come from the final price paid for the car. Changing the system doesn't change that.
The tax rate in the United States is roughly 20% of GDP. So when you spend money on something, you are paying 20% in taxes. Set up any tax system you want and it will end up working the same. The only way you lower or raise taxes is when the government changes the percentage of GDP they take in. To demonstrate with a simple model, consider if you were to hire a piano teacher for your child. The piano teacher charges a competitive amount for their services plus what is necessary to cover the tax bill. You can have a system where you pay the total amount to the teacher and the teacher sends the tax portion to the government or you can pay the teacher their part and send the government theirs directly. It's the same either way. the consumer is paying the tax. There are only two types of taxes; consumption taxes and wealth taxes. The estate tax and property taxes are examples of wealth taxes. Almost all other taxes are consumption taxes, irregardless of how they are collected. Go ahead and try to define a system where it isn't the end consumer that pays the tax. You'll fail. Under close examination, the real tax payment will always trace back to the consumer.
There is, however, a compelling reason for the fair tax. In the US, roughly 20% of the price of everything is built in tax burden. However when an imported product is sold, that 20% or a large portion of it goes out of the country. The current tax system allows foreign imports to compete against US products which have a 20% tax burden built into them. The fair tax would lower the sticker price of the US product and tax revenue to the government would be the same whether a domestic or import product was sold. It would go a long way in correcting our trade imbalance. Right now foreign companies get nearly 20% bonus revenue vs their domestic competitors. If union members understood how taxes really work, they would take to the streets demanding the fair tax.
The current trade deficit is over $700 billion a year. The Fair tax would trap 20% of that in the country as tax revenue. It would be well over $100 billion a year in additional tax revenue to the government without the American Taxpayer paying one cent more than they do now.
The Fair tax proponents say a rate of 20 - 23% would be necessary to produce the same revenue as the current tax system. They forget the lost revenue leaving the country. By trapping that revenue in the country, a tax rate of more like 17% - 18% would produce the same revenue as the current system.