According to Boortz and Linder, there is another way of looking at payroll taxes and withholding. While their point of view may be irrelevant under the current tax system, that doesn't guarantee it would remain irrelevant if the FairTax were passed.
The FACT is that the bill says payroll and income taxes are repealed, it doesn't say where they go. Boortz and Linder say its up to the employer to decide who's pocket the money ends up in. To assume that repealed taxes will end up in your paycheck is to buy a pig in a poke.
I think you just told me that if you go west from Spain, you will fall off the edge before you reach the New World.
No, I'm telling you that just because something is revolutionary, doesn't make it good or better than what it replaces.
The consumption tax, on the other hand, can only be regarded as a payment for permission-to-live. It implies that a man will not be allowed to advance or even sustain his own life, unless he pays, off the top, a fee to the State for permission to do so. The consumption tax does not strike me, in its philosophical implications, as one whit more noble, or less presumptuous, than the income tax. Murray Rothbard
I am reminded of a game we used to play as children called "Mother May I". One had to ask permission from "mother" before any move could be made. In the FairTax version, one must pay "uncle" before indulging in a bowl of oatmeal, first for the oatmeal, then for the water, next for the energy to cook the oatmeal, and a payment for each and every item added.
The real issue is total spending by government, not tax reform. Ron Paul
A touching image, tugging at our compassion. Except it isn't realistic. The poor soul, wondering where to get his next bowl of gruel, will pay "uncle" with the prebate and pay for the gruel with whatever resources he uses now. The FairTax refund undercuts that old "don't tax the poor" mantra.
It is convenient for the refund to be forgotten by FairTax opponents, except when they start referring to a refund as a welfare payment.