> “Many issues to discuss, but first, I am Hank Van Gieson, a retired Air Force pilot, aged 78, and I was shot at and missed in two wars defending your right to write any fool thing you wish. I am not a paid lobbyist, just a conservative citizen interested in the truth. Save your insults for another time and focus on the facts.”
People can say whatever they want on the internet and even say they are Hank Van Gieson, a retired Air Force Pilot etc. Such statements do not mean anything nor count for anything because they may not be true and usually aren’t. You said yourself that you are/were a lobbyist here:
http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2010/03/interview-with-ken-hoagland-author-of.html
Whether what you say is true or not I am inclined to think after reading your internet activity that you are not qualified to be a lobbyist and that you are a person of self-delusion.
Your moniker and others that you use are reported all over the internet. Your arguments have been rebutted over and over again. Your ‘facts’ and positions have been debunked, shown to be false and are devoid of an educated demeanor. Yet you continue to seek out websites including LGBT websites where a discussion of the FairTax is being held and you have repeated the same diatribe again and again.
Further, you were asked politely for the names of the economists that you referred to in your previous post where you referred to them saying “at sales tax rates above 10%, illegal evasion as well as legal tax avoidance start to increase significantly”, and you have not supplied these references. Any researcher worth something would have provided links and citations. When a poster resorts to “Economists say” etc. most readers here at FR take that as shoddy cover knowing that “Economists have called nine of the last five recessions”. In other words your references and arguments are shoddy and substandard. That’s not an insult; that’s a fair critique of your research ability. Even if you were pro-FairTax I would not hire you for any reason as a researcher.
As for your representation of yourself, here’s what some others say about you:
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Permalink Reply by Edward Ray McKee, Jr. on October 6, 2010 at 1:58pm
Hank Van Gieson is a notorious liberal FairTax hater. He uses every opportunity in virtually every blog to attack the FairTax. That he would be part of an education curriculum for FairTaxNation is incomprehensible. Mr. Van Gieson’s analysis as to every provision of the FairTax bill is always slanted in favor of the current IRS system. Mr. Van Gieson has even stated in the past that he would prefer a Value Added Tax on top of our current system before he would the FairTax. I encourage everyone to do their own research. I also reprimand FairTaxNation for allowing Mr. Van Gieson’s junk to appear on its website.
Ray McKee
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Permalink Reply by Phil Tuttobene on October 25, 2010
Public disclosure:
Hank Van Gieson served as a lobbyist. He served ten years as a lobbyist for Boeing Aerospace and now still “consults” as a retired lobbyist. IMO, Meaning he is still a lobbyist.
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and further you have the aliases of Linda Little, Van Little all of which reveal your agenda and repeat the same near verbatim flawed assertions based on false premises.
http://economics501.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/fairtax-si-progressive/
There is the most revealing evidence about your true affiliations here:
http://redneckdemocrat.com/fair-tax-the-real-truth/comment-page-1/
where you are an ardent poster on a website that is democrat, that is anti-Sarah Palin, that is anti-GOP. I suggest you go back there for that appears to be where you belong because it is easily seen by gleening from all your internet postings that nothing is going to turn you to the FairTax. This is evident from having spewed all over the internet your laundry lists of false premises, disingenuous questions and unsupported or deceptive assertions. As one poster said of you that “you “
Other postings under your moniker reveal you to be a “Flat-Taxer” which means you are for the Income tax.
These are not insults hurled at you, whoever you really are, and you are free to post just about any view you wish on this website forum but it is fair to let others see where come from and what others say about your views.
So I think most will agree that your views here on this website do not require any response as they have been smattered all over the internet and others have already responded to your repetitious diatribe.
I will ask others who post here and that seek learning and understanding of the FairTax to ignore your deceptions. I will refer back to this post if they have any desire to find out more about you and the responses to your laundry list of misinformation.
Typical Fairtax advocate response. If you can’t refute the message, attack the messenger. Shame on you!
To finish with your pathetic responses, let’s talk about the prebate. Calling it a tax refund is one of the oldest and disingenuous Fairtax myths ever put forth. Google “entitlements” and read the definition. HR25 does indeed authorize such payments. Here is a simple test to prove it is an entitlement (that we can’t afford). Entitlements add to your gross annual income, while tax refunds do not! Case closed!
Setting your character attacks aside, all you have to do is show that any of my claims are wrong. I have always been willing to learn, unlike the average Fairtaxer. So, anyone who wants to give it a try would be more than welcome. Here are my 15 criticisms of the Fairtax scheme. Taken individually, they may not seem overly important, but taken collectively, the Fairtax scheme can’t work. The income tax needs replacing, but the Fairtax is not the way to do it!
(1) The Fairtax plan just won’t work! Economists tell us that at sales tax rates above 10%, illegal evasion as well as legal tax avoidance start to increase significantly. And at 30%, the Fairtax plan becomes unworkable. No other nation has ever successfully funded their central government with such a broad based national sales tax. Six have tried, failed and switched to a VAT which has significantly less evasion at higher rates. There is no dual reporting under the Fairtax, and our 10 million retailers would be sorely tempted to “cook their books” in order to avoid sending off the tax revenue to the federal Treasury.
(2) HR25 proposes that the Federal government tax State and Local government purchases of all new goods and all services, including a significant portion of State and Local government employee payrolls as representative of services provided. Under the long held Supreme Court doctrine of intergovernmental tax immunity, this taxation would be found to be inappropriate. The 30% exclusive sales tax rate could easily rise to 43% or higher.
(3) Although Fairtaxers claim that the Family Consumption Allowance (FCA) or “prebate” is similar to a tax refund, it is not! The FCA is an income supplement that can be spent (and taxed), or saved as financial circumstances allow. The FCA would be scored by CBO/OMB as a cash grant entitlement costing $600 billion annually at a time when entitlements are squeezing out discretionary spending in the federal budget.
(4) The Fairtax could destroy the new housing market! Banks typically loan the sales price or the appraised value, whichever is less. Appraisers generally do not include commissions or taxes in their valuation. There is no collateral value in a federal sales tax. In order to purchase a new house without mortgage insurance, buyers may have to come up with funds for not only a 20% down payment but also the 30% sales tax at closing.
(5) The National Governors Association opposes any federal tax that would intrude into a tax area that has traditionally been reserved for and relied on by state and local governments. The Fairtax would seriously threaten the ability of state and local governments to maintain their tax base. With this kind of headwind, the States may not be willing to act as the federal tax collector, nor are the States liable to approve repealing the 16th Amendment.
(6) The Fairtax plan would destroy our Social Security system as presently structured. (a) Today, workers typically pay FICA for 45 years or so. Under the Fairtax, everyone pays sales taxes on purchases for all their life. (b) Upon reaching retirement age, today’s workers begin to draw benefits and make no further FICA contributions. Under the Fairtax, everyone, including retirees drawing benefits, continue to pay sales taxes for life. (c)Today, benefit amounts are tied to income earned during work years. But, under the Fairtax, that would be unfair because the Fairtax taxes both income and wealth. A major restructuring of Social Security would be necessary under the Fairtax.
(7) The Fairtax scheme throws middle class retirees under the bus. All after tax savings accumulated under current tax law would be directly double taxed when spent. Retirees would be forced to resume paying for their benefits with their sales tax dollars. Middle class retirees would see a significant increase in their federal tax burden along with a reduction in their purchasing power.
(8) The Fairtax rationale for treating all government agencies as consumers is that it would prevent unfair government competition with the private sector. But that issue was dealt with in Section 704 of HR25. Any government agency that sells $2500 or more per quarter would be considered a Government Enterprise, and would have to collect and remit the 23% sales tax. There was no need to tax all government consumption.
(9) Despite repeated claims by Fairtaxers that investments wouldn’t be taxed, Section 801-806 of HR25 lays a large implicit service charge (tax) on both interest bearing investments such as CD’s, and debt instruments such as mortgages and credit cards.
(10) HR25 provides for an inventory tax credit which would add about $350 billion to the federal budget deficit with no offsets in the first year of implementation.
(11) HR25 proposes to implement the national sales tax “cold turkey”, despite the fact that no other country has ever successfully funded their government with such a broad based sales tax. The Congress is basically conservative and would much prefer an evolutionary approach rather then the revolutionary one proposed in HR25.
(12) No list of Fairtax criticisms would be complete without including the disingenuous claim that the revenue neutral Fairtax rate would be 23%. In terms all Americans understand, the proposed rate is 30%, or likely even higher. According to AFFT, retail merchants will have to add a 30% sales tax to their costs in order to arrive at the 23% tax inclusive price.
(13) One of the most egregious Fairtax claims is that retail prices would remain about the same. The 1997 Prof. Dale Jorgenson embedded tax study assumed that employee payroll and income tax withholding would be available to employers for greatest cost reduction. Reducing employee gross pay/pensions by the withheld amounts will not happen for a variety of contractual, legal, and fairness reasons. The Fairtax Director of Research and other expert economists have written that the most likely scenario would be that everyone would get 100% of their gross pay and retail prices would rise. A best estimate, based on 2007 actual revenue data, is that business tax costs of 10% of sales could be removed and retail prices would rise by 17% on average after adding the 30% sales tax. (1.00 x .90 x 1.30 = 1.17)
(14) There is no data supporting the claim that there is $13 trillion in US owned wealth located offshore to avoid US taxes. According to the Tax Justice Network, an international organization which tracks offshore wealth, there was $1.6 trillion in offshore wealth owned by North Americans in 2005. There are 23 sovereign nations in North America, so the best estimate for US owned wealth offshore is $700-800 billion. And, lacking some sort of amnesty provision from IRS penalties in HR25, why would any of that wealth come “rushing home”?
(15) Fairtax savings from buying “used”, (tax previously paid), are highly overstated. There are no used services, which make up half of the typical family budget. No used groceries, no used restaurant meals, no used heating oil, no used gas for the family auto, nothing used at Wal-Mart, etc. etc. The opportunities to buy used would be limited to infrequent purchases of houses, cars, boats, etc. unless families choose to lower their standard of living just to spite the federal tax collector.