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Thursday, July 28, 2005

 

In Support of the Fair Tax

Do you know what the Fair Tax is all about? If your answer is no, you should take it upon yourself to learn all about it. Go to http://www.fairtax.org and read to your heart's content. This idea would solve so many of the problems in this country with regard to Federal taxes with the primary one being the elimination of the Internal Revenue Service.

Everyone would agree that the federal government needs to collect certain revenues to sustain itself. Now how much it really needs to do this can be argued but this discussion is not about that, but rather about the method used to collect this revenue. The current IRS tax code has undergone so many alterations that it bears absolutely no resemblance to the original income tax code. The tax code is changed nearly every year and is used more for social engineering than for collecting a tax in a fair manner. It should not be used for these purposes!

What is the goal of the Fair Tax Plan? Simply put, to replace the income tax, social security and medicare taxes, capital gains taxes, corporate taxes, imbedded taxes with one, clear, simple tax rate levied on retail purchases payable by everybody regardless of status, income, race, sex or whatever. It is collected at the retail cash register on all goods and services. It is not collected on any used purchases and there are no goods or services that are exempt from this tax for anybody no matter who you are are where you are from.

The biggest immediate benefit I can see is the fact that you will receive the entire amount of your paycheck on payday. There will be no withholding tax, no payroll taxes whatsoever at the federal level and there will be no reporting your income on cumbersome IRS forms at the end of each year. No more saving of receipts for things that you may itemize on your tax return because there is no more tax return. Period. Compliance with current federal tax laws cost our economy billions of dollars every year. This cost is eliminated completely.

Now immediately what jumps into most people's minds at this point is the fact that it will hurt the poor more than it will hurt richer folks. The crafters of this ingenious plan have taken that into consideration and have made allowances for it. Each month everyone will receive a "rebate" check for the amount of taxes that would normally be paid by yourself up to the poverty level. Currently that works out to about $400-$450 per month per person. Everyone receives this rebate thereby canceling out the taxes that they would pay for the coming month. So this is not in any way a regressive tax. It does not affect the poor any more than it affects anyone else.

With the Fair Tax Plan in effect, you can choose to buy something new and pay the retail sales tax or you can buy something used and not pay the retail sales tax. This choice is up to you, therefore you actually will have a say in how much tax you will be paying. You actually have NO say in how much income tax you will be paying unless you elect to lower your income. The Fair Tax Plan puts more control into the hands of the individual.

The numbers I've heard concerning the percentage of the tax is around 22-23% which sounds like an incredibly high amount for a tax. But what you must consider is the amount of imbedded taxes that are a part of everything we buy currently. Most estimates state there is about 22-23% of taxes imbedded in each and every item or service that we currently purchase. These are taxes paid by companies/businesses along the product chain that become priced into the product or service and passed along eventually to the consumer. No business or corporation actually pays these taxes. They are all passed along to the end user, the consumer, and all taxes are ultimately paid by the individual.

There can be no argument on this issue. Every tax levied against a corporation is priced into their product or service and is paid for by individuals who purchase said product or service. Taxes are simply a cost of doing business to a company and reflected in the retail price.

These imbedded taxes will disappear. Corporations will not be required to pay income taxes so the imbedded taxes will be phased out of their products and services. There will be pressure in the market place to reduce retail prices to reflect the fact that imbedded taxes are eliminated. This will push prices down by roughly the same amount as the imbedded taxes, or 22-23%. And since the Fair Tax Plan percentage is about the same amount, there will be a wash in retail prices. Sales tax is collected at the point of sale on lower prices due to the elimination of imbedded taxes and the total price with the new sales tax will be roughly the same as before.

So we will have prices that are roughly the same, yet we are keeping our entire paycheck, not paying any payroll taxes at all and in addition receiving a rebate check for the amount of sales taxes that a poverty level person would be expected to pay. And you never have to fill out another Income Tax Form 1040 again! It's a win-win-win proposition!

Implementing this plan would make the United States a very desirable country to do business in. Instead of hearing people grouse about large corporations moving overseas to avoid paying our excessive taxes, we will see corporations clamoring to come into this country to enjoy the benefits of the reduced accounting, lower taxes and simplified method of collection and compliance of any country in the world.

I see no valid argument against this Fair Tax Plan. There is nothing logically incorrect about its' thesis. It will work as advertised and everybody in this country will be better off because of it. Neal Boortz has written a book about this plan called simply "The Fair Tax Book" and it is due for release on August 2. I have my copy on order plus an additional one for my daughter. He has co-authored this book with Congressman John Linder from Georgia who has sponsored this bill for the past several years.

We need everyone who knows anything about this plan to spread the word to anyone who knows nothing of this plan. Once you analyze all aspects of this bill, you will see that it really has no flaws and will be a boon to our capitalistic economy unlike anything we've ever seen, except for maybe the boom years of the dot-com era. But unlike the dot-coms, the Fair Tax Plan will benefit this country and the world for many, many years to come. All we have to do is convince our Senators and Congressmen that this is the way to fix forever our dilapidated Income Tax system. We need them to listen to us on this matter and leave behind forever the notion of social engineering through the Internal Revenue Service.

Shout out this message to anyone who will listen. Implement the Fair Tax Plan ASAP.

OJ

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