Free Republic

The implementation of the FairTax or the repeal of the 16th Amendment? Perhaps the best way to approach this chicken-or-the-egg question is to acknowledge that change is difficult. Most people don’t like change. It’s the devil you know vs. the devil you don’t. Over the past 90+ years, the internal revenue code has become a nightmare web, spun by a spider on Prozac, yet it is the spider we know. As if injected with psycho-venom, we lie in a stupor as our paychecks are quietly reduced before we receive them. Alternatively, lobbyists have done a very good job of hacking...

A Battlefield for Tax Reform There are a few significant battlefields in the war for tax reform. One of them is Free Republic. What makes the Free Republic battlefield significant is that the debate is at the cutting edge. The debate on Free Republic is the most current and most knowledgeable. It is a year ahead of other significant battlefields (radio talk shows, political town-hall meetings, conversations among neighbors and coworkers.) The trend on Free Republic with respect to tax reform is going to show up in the real world. Free Republic is a tiny segment of the world, albeit...

Kerry-Edwards Phone Corps As a member of the Kerry-Edwards Phone Corps, you can start helping our volunteer efforts in key battleground states around the country. Members of this dedicated group of supporters make phone calls into battleground states to recruit volunteers for specific events such as canvassing and phone banking. You can join the Phone Corps and start making calls right now using our easy online tool at: http://calls.johnkerry.com

It’s July 1st. The First of July. A rather major (and increasingly meaningless) holiday is just three days away. Today marks the anniversary of withholding taxes from your paycheck. Withholding started on July 1, 1943. That’s 60 years ago. The politicial class needed an excuse to move to the withholding, and World War II served that purpose nicely. We were told it was all about cash flow. The government didn’t have the luxury of waiting to get its share of your income. Don’t worry, though. We will all go back to the normal routine of paying our taxes yearly when...

No matter what your views on President Bush's statement of upcoming war, this, from an English journalist, is very interesting. Just a word of background, for those of you who aren't familiar with the UK's Daily Mirror. This is a notoriously left-wing daily that is normally not supportive of the Colonials across the Atlantic. Well written, Tony Parsons Daily Mirror. September 11, 2002 Less than a year and a half ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting -- the mass murder of thousands, live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September...

No War Against Iraq George W. Bush has declared his intention to wage a so-called ‘preemptive’ war against Iraq and is now seeking to strong-arm the international community and the U.N. into support and submission. Congress rushed to rubber-stamp the war against the will of the people. A war of aggression violates the United States Constitution, the United Nations Charter, and the principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal. It violates the collective law of humanity that recognizes the immeasurable harm and unconscionable human suffering when a country engages in wars of aggression to advance its government’s perceived national interests. No Congressional...

LINDER TO RE -INTRODUCE FAIRTAX BILL TODAY Bill Gaining Momentum on First Day of 108th Congress WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman John Linder (R-Georgia) is wasting no time in his drive to see the FairTax become reality during the 108th Congress, re-introducing the bill on today’s first day of the new session. The FairTax bill would replace all federal income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes, and death taxes with a national retail sales tax. “I am more enthusiastic than ever about seeing the FairTax become reality,” said Linder. “The possibility of doing away with the IRS and putting the nation...

April 13 — The Democrats are getting fed up with watching President Bush on television. In an unusual letter to the heads of the three cable news networks, Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) complained about “the lack of television coverage of press events featuring elected leaders of the Democratic Party.” SNIP See URL for the rest of the story.

WASHINGTON (March 25, 2002 4:02 p.m. EST) - The Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service filed court papers Monday seeking records from the Visa credit card company, targeting citizens and companies who use offshore banks in tax havens to avoid paying taxes. In addition to that federal court filing in San Francisco, the agencies filed documents in a Miami court announcing that American Express Co. has agreed to cooperate by turning over records for accounts located in Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. The IRS also said that MasterCard International Ltd. has already produced 1.7 million...

On behalf of the 335,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU), I write to offer our endorsement of H.R. 2525, the FairTax, and to urge all Members of Congress to join as cosponsors. Should H.R. 2525 come before the House for a vote, it will be heavily weighted in our annual Rating of Congress. America’s present Tax Code is extremely punitive and complicated, taking more from American taxpayers than ever before. The current Tax Code is clearly not what the nation envisioned when it ratified the 16th Amendment nearly 100 years ago. Initially, rates were extremely low. In fact, the tax rate ...

Well, I can't paste a single photo, so try this: Hug me!

Americans do need a tax cut, especialy when you consider that we pay the highest taxes as a function of Gross Domestic Product (the sum of all goods and services in the economy) than we have ever paid in the history of our nation. However, the reasons why taxes have climbed yearly, including the past several years when the Congress actually claimed that it cut taxes, is partly due to the reality that taxes are hidden from the view of the taxpayer. We believe the best way to accomplish a (permanent) tax cut is to ensure Americans know how much ...

EGADS! After a few weeks of mainly just having fun with ZoneAlarm, suddenly I'm getting several alarms an hour saying, "ZoneAlarm has blocked internet access to ip address from your computer!! This means my machine is trying to access the net without my permission. I check "more info", but the program requesting the access is "not available". Most of the requests are NNTP or SMTP and seem to go in order of some type (ie port 1068, then it'll try port 1168, etc). Can anyone tell me what's going on? Do I have a "trojan horse"? What do I do ...

This is posted under "MY QUESTIONS" cuz I don't know what these alerts mean. Can anyone tell me what they mean? ZoneAlarm sure works well, but what does all this stuff mean? Sometimes I don't get hit for hours, but at other times (like now) I get hit with something every 15 dang seconds! I look forward to the education! Happy New Year!

Snip The high court issued its edict at about 2:40 p.m., just a few moments after the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta denied Bush's emergency motion to stop the recount. That court, however, ordered Florida officials not to change previously certified results declaring him the winner by 537 votes. Snip

Presidential candidate Steve Forbes, Claims that his flat tax plan is 17%, but only on income above $36,000. Claims that his plan will take half of all American citizens off the tax rolls. Claims that his plan will eliminate the IRS. Claims that his plan will drive a stake into the heart of the income tax system.He is wrong on all four counts and I'll prove it!Forbes "assumes" he will be able to privatize Social Security and Medicare, but what if he doesn't? What happens to that 17% figure then? Why not "assume" to eliminate Welfare, the Teacher's Unions, the ...

HOUSTON...We Have A Problem(with hidden taxes) Recently, the Washington Post did a break down of dry cleaning one shirt for $ 1.10, analyzing each component of the total price. Their analysis looked like this: Cost   Labor 43 cents Payroll taxes 4 cents Rent 12 cents Supplies 9 cents Depreciation 9 cents Utilities 7 cents Insurance 4 cents Office & administration 4 cents Repair & maintenance 3 cents Advertising 3 cents Interest/bank charges 3 cents Claims & miscellaneous 3 cents Profit 6 cents TOTAL $1.10 In response, economists Gary and Aldonna Robbins of the Texas-based Institute for Public Policy ...

Imagine no income taxes to pay. Imagine no federal deductions from your paycheck. Imagine no individual tax filing. Imagine no IRS. Imagine April 15th as just another day of spring. Congressmen Linder (Ga) and Peterson (Mn) have introduced HB 2525, The Fair Tax, which will accomplish all of this when passed. The plan repeals all personal and corporate income taxes, capital gains taxes, and estate and gift taxes. The plan also repeals all payroll taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes. This allows individuals to receive their paycheck without any federal deductions! How then would we pay for government? Under ...

Bringing tax code into modern era Commentary Commentary Byrne Herrmann Huffington Mitchell Neal Novak Ontiveros O'Sullivan Roeser Stevens Steinberg Sweet Will Commentary Byrne Herrmann Huffington Mitchell Neal Novak Ontiveros O'Rourke O'Sullivan Roeper Roeser Steinberg Sweet Stevens Will Submit a Letter to the Editor Please include address and daytime phone; no attached files. Bringing tax code into modern era July 20, 2000 To tax the Internet or not to tax the Internet, that has emerged as one of the more contentious tax issues in recent years. The captains of the burgeoning Internet trade assert taxation could smother e-commerce growth. Brick-and-mortar ...

On 4/17/00, the day by which individuals must file annual income tax returns, supporters of the Fair Tax NRST and those interested in learning about the NRST gathered near Atlanta, Georgia to enjoy a golf tournament/fundraiser. Rep John Linder (R-Ga) and syndicated talk radio host Neal Boortz played in the event, along with a hundred or so of the hardest working Fair Tax and NRST volunteers around. Some FReepers in attendance were Taxman, Ga6thDL, and Principled. (BTW Taxman looks forward to posting and discussing his recent House Ways & Means Committee testimony more fully very soon.) The NRST balloon was ...