[Carry_Okie]

You're naive if you think there isn't bartering and a black market system with a tax code in excess of 67,500 pages. There will be far less bartering and a far smaller black market with a consumption base tax that will increase people's purchasing power and eliminate the increasingly intrusive IRS along with their multitude of tax forms.

You're naive if you think that the type of enforcement you'll get with a Fair Tax won't be far more intrusive than the existing system. The very assertion commonly made on this thread to that it captures everybody's expenses displays the level of comprehensive enforcement envisioned.

Unfortunately, most of the evasion will be done by low-income people who now pay no income taxes. Paying nearly 50% on a transaction (as they would in California) is a LOT of money to them (the law of the diminishing marginal value of money being what it is). So this law will criminalize vast numbers of people who now face no such complications.

Worse, for you to make such a hand-wave assertion of "far less bartering," when I cited an existing example of bootleg cigarettes and alcohol, begs for an example. You offered none. I promise you, the majority of people in this country don't worry about 67,500 pages. They fill out a short form or an EZ.

I was an NRST advocate long before there was a Fair Tax proposal. No more. Cut spending. That's the real problem.

[Defend Liberty]

You're naive if you think that the type of enforcement you'll get with a Fair Tax won't be far more intrusive than the existing system. The very assertion commonly made on this thread to that it captures everybody's expenses displays the level of comprehensive enforcement envisioned.

Why would the federal government care about anyone's expense patterns when people will have already complied by paying the tax at the point of sale?

Unfortunately, most of the evasion will be done by low-income people who now pay no income taxes. Paying nearly 50% on a transaction (as they would in California) is a LOT of money to them (the law of the diminishing marginal value of money being what it is). So this law will criminalize vast numbers of people who now face no such complications

Your statement might be accurate if it weren't for the fact the tax rate will be 23%, not 50% and that the prebate will reimburse people monthly for taxes paid on necessities up to the poverty level in order to lessen the burden on low income earners.

Worse, for you to make such a hand-wave assertion of "far less bartering," when I cited an existing example of bootleg cigarettes and alcohol, begs for an example. You offered none. I promise you, the majority of people in this country don't worry about 67,500 pages. They fill out a short form or an EZ.

People will be far less likely to bootleg any product considering their purchasing power will increase since federal income taxes will no longer be deducted from their paychecks or dividend checks. I promise you more people have become worried about the 67,500 plus pages as the Alternative Minimum Tax continues to lower the threshold for taxable income to include lower income earners who the ATM wasn't originally meant to target.

I was an NRST advocate long before there was a Fair Tax proposal. No more. Cut spending. That's the real problem.

So your alternative is to keep in place a tax code that has continues to be increasingly intrusive and oppressive, especially now with unconstitutional Obamacare adding 16,000 more IRS agents and requiring businesses to file 1090 forms for any transactions over $600, until spending is cut to some unspecified level? No tax code is designed to specifically cut spending. The Fair will reduce spending by eliminating the IRS and its $11 billion price tag.