Fyi
The above is the key. Without repealing the 16th, you can bet that we'll simply end up with the old taxes and a new tax.
That would be disastrous, but it would be right down the alley of big government Democrats and Republicans alike. They'd love to snooker you with the idea of one, but sucker you into getting two.
Not true...everyone gets the same rebate regardless of income. I'm still not sure I like the Fair Tax though.
Example: This is a typical, cogent argument from the pro side in a prebate:"LOL! A SQL word. Does it mean: “lost your nuts?”
Also gives new meaning to the word "dufus, doofus"
Seems like a fair and balanced discussion, though I think the rebate was supposed to go to everybody, so the ‘poor’ definition wouldn’t be necessary.
My problems with the FT are (a)the double taxation of savings, (b) the rather deceptive way it is evangelized, (c) the inability to kill the 16th Amendment.
"You're going to have to have a rebate system and you're going to have to have monthly reporting of your income to a federal official," he said.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Under the FairTax all citizens and legal residents get the rebate. Bill Gates' family will get the same one as someone with the same size family who earns nothing. Thus no income tracking or reported is needed.
“it would still require the elderly to pay a brand new tax on the goods and services they purchase, after paying taxes on their income their whole lives.”
Do away with taxes to anyone over 62.
"Right now we're taxing work and we're taxing investment, and we're getting less of it," she explained.
If we get less work and investment by taxing income, wouldn't we get less consumption with a sales tax? While increased saving and investment is a good thing, what would the economic effects of reduced spending be on the economy? On tax collections? For instance, would a 30% sales tax on materials, services, and labor discourage home remodeling? If home owners decide to forego home improvement, what happens to the income of suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, contractors, carpenters, and architects? What happens to their jobs?
The unemployment rate has remained low, at 4.5 percent. A recent report on retail sales shows a strong beginning to the holiday shopping season across the country -- and I encourage you all to go shopping more. President Bush, Press Conference, December 20, 2006. After 9/11 we were encouraged to go to the malls; and just this week, our government in its wisdom, decided what the slowing economy needs is more shopping. One might conclude from this that shopping is critical to our economic health.
Further, isn't a switch from an income tax to a sales tax a massive social/economic engineering program designed to influence the economic choices individuals make?
While a consumption tax is attractive, it poses major problems.
Because if you want to get rid of the Income Tax, you also have to get rid of the FICA (Social Security) tax, which is tied to the Income Tax, or people still have to fill out their federal FICA tax once a year. Tax withholding also goes out the window, but that is also intertwined with FICA.
Lots of other federal taxes, such as capital gains, are also tied in with the Income Tax. And businesses have a bunch of taxes tied in as well.
Federal Income taxes are also not just a source of money to the government, but information as well. The government wants that information, and has convinced itself that it *needs*, or even *has to have* that information. So part of this will mean creating new means, probably involving a lot of paperwork, so that the government can get this information from individuals.
State Income taxes are independent of the Federal Income Tax, but are intertwined with it as well. Either the States would continue with their Income taxes, raising them in the process, or strongly boost their sales tax.
The poor would have to be on some identification system, perhaps fingerprint based, to avoid paying taxes, as many won’t or can’t carry photo IDs. In turn, with any such system, a very large enormous underground economy will emerge just so that people can obtain things without either paying the sales tax or being identified. There is already a large “cash only” underground, and it would increase in size many times.
“Ready... Aim....”
OK, I’ll take my shot. I agree with the the “Fair Tax” from a philosophical perspective. I just don’t see it working from a practical perspective. As other posters have noted, you would have to get rid of the 16th Amendment to make it work. And that just isn’t going to happen anytime soon. You can bet that as soon as a national sales tax is implemented, it will become necessary to re-implement the income tax shortly thereafter for the next emergency that comes up on the horizon. So you’d end up with both a national sales tax and an income tax.
There is also the issue of how income taxes are used to reward and penalize various players in the political arena. I don’t see the politicians giving up that power.
With respect to the “Fair Tax” advocates, I would suggest that they spend their time learning the ins and outs of the current system instead. There are plenty of tax minimization strategies out there that are unknown or underused by the public at large. Knowledge is power. But of course, doing that would mean work, and that’s nowhere near as sexy as trying to implement a “Fair Tax” that we probably won’t see in our lifetimes.
From the article: “However, he believes the very rebate system that the fair taxers tout as helpful to the poor will engender bureaucratic rigmarole. Because such a payment to poorer citizens would come monthly, the government would need to keep monthly track of who is officially “poor.” “
The prebate is sent to everyone. The prebate is not means tested. FTR, the prebate is one piece of the FT with which I do not agree. But, at least report the truth.
From the article: “The fact that the fair taxers want to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and rely on the states to collect the revenue and direct it to the national government would compound the intricacies of the proposed system.”
I’ll disagree on this point. The mechanism is already in place for commercial enterprises to remit sales taxes to State authorities. This will mean adding the step from the States to the Feds; and it would cut the number of reporting entities from a couple hundred million to 21 million (approximately).
From the article: “Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, pointed out that even if a national sales tax could be implemented without taking more money from low-income citizens than the current system, it would still require the elderly to pay a brand new tax on the goods and services they purchase, after paying taxes on their income their whole lives.”
Sophistry at its best... These elderly folks are currently being double taxed, as are we all being double taxed on current after tax savings being used to purchase goods and services. The fact that you don’t see the taxes (they are embedded in the price structure) doesn’t mean they aren’t there. If you buy into Mr. Norquist’s argument, then you should probably not believe in a round Earth, or the atom, or the alien craft that made itself visible to Dennis Kookcinich.
Let the flames begin...
Heck with a FT. REDUCE GOVERNMENT SPENDING!
(Should anybody feel inclined to comment about the above referenced post, then please do so in this thread.)
The bottom line is that the people need to wise up to the very serious problem of a federal government that is not working within the constraints of the federal Constitution, the consequence of FDR's dirty politics. The people need to quit sitting on their hands and petition lawmakers, judges and justices who are not upholding their oaths to defend the Constitution, demanding that they resign from their jobs.
Didn’t want you folks to feel “left out”