Free Republic

Casselberry, FL The Winter Springs Civic Center 400 N. Edgemon Ave Winter Springs, FL. 32708 We will meet this month at The Winter Springs Civic Center. There will be a presentation of the FairTax followed by a Q&A and a discussion of recent volunteer activities. For more information, please contact Larry Walters at 407-949-2959. Date: Thursday, August 14, 2008 Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM This event does not require an RSVP. Registered users can request event reminders. Register

WHILE AMERICANS focus on the interminable Clinton-Obama celebrity death match, Sen. John McCain is using clear-headed, compellingly crafted speeches to propose surprisingly bold, free-market ideas. With one huge exception, the Arizona Republican advocates more limited, open government as his Democratic rivals promise tax hikes and an even-busier state. Voters should welcome this stark contrast. On spending, John McCain would rule with a tight fist. "There will be no more subsidies for special pleaders -- no more corporate welfare -- no more throwing around billions of dollars of the people's money on pet projects, while the people themselves are struggling to...

John McCain, looking through a crystal ball to 2013 and the end of a prospective first term, sees "spasmodic" but reduced violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dead or captured and government spending curbed by his ready veto pen. The Republican presidential contender also envisions April’s annual angst replaced by a simpler flat tax, illegal immigrants living humanely under a temporary worker program, and political partisanship stemmed by weekly news conferences and British-style question periods with joint meetings of Congress. In a speech being delivered Thursday, McCain concedes he cannot make the changes alone, but he wants to...

This is the latest tax reform poll that I have seen. This is from an interesting website in which members develop their own polls.

The German government's purchase of data stolen from a Liechtenstein bank has reinvigorated longstanding debates about privacy, law enforcement and international relations. Much of the fallout has followed predictable patterns. Some argue that Germany's richest citizens should be brought to justice for failing to comply with the tax laws, while others point out that it is unseemly for a nation to spy on a peaceful neighbor. The conflict between Germany and Liechtenstein also has triggered a broader debate about tax competition and the role of so-called tax havens. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is trying to use...

In 2001, Russia enacted a flat tax rate of 13 percent; a reform so popular it has since been adopted by countries such as Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Romania, Slovakia and Macedonia, says the Healthcare Economist. But is the flat tax a good thing? According to the authors of a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, it is: Studying Russia, the authors found that the flat tax lead to a significant decrease in tax evasion. This is likely due to the fact that lower marginal tax rates decreases the incentive to avoid reporting income. Further, if there...

It's never fun to admit failure. But Russia's 13 percent flat tax forces me to confess a certain degree of incompetence. For 10 years, I've been working in Washington to replace our convoluted tax code with a simple and fair flat tax. But as every taxpayer can attest, my efforts have not borne fruit. Yet in Russia, President Vladimir Putin -- the former head of the Soviet KGB -- implemented a flat tax in 2001. Not only a flat tax, but a flat tax with a 13 percent rate, four percentage points lower than the supposedly "radical" plan espoused by...

Yes, I've read the legislation. No, I don't listen to the radio show. No, I'm no stupid, idiotic, dishonest, evil, an employee of the IRS, spouse of an IRS employee, or part of a conspiracy of journalists against the middle class. Yes, other conservative economists who have asked tough questions about the FairTax warned me to get ready for a gusher of hate mail. Yes, the fact that the FairTax faction (after reading a torrent of insulting email, that word seems right to me) defaults to abusive speech from the beginning means that they are a movement of zealots with...

At a time when some voters are asking how the religious views of candidates will shape their policies, a professor’s discovery of how little tax the biggest landowners in her state paid to finance the government has prompted some other legal scholars to scour religious texts to explore the moral basis of tax and spending policies. The professor, Susan Pace Hamill, is an expert at tax avoidance for small businesses and teaches at the University of Alabama Law School. She also holds a degree in divinity from a conservative evangelical seminary, where her master’s thesis explored how Alabama’s tax-and-spend policies...

Gigot: Well, Fred Thompson has his flat tax, and Mike Huckabee has his fair tax. But who's got the better idea, and what are the other GOP presidential hopefuls proposing? Here with a closer look at the candidates' tax plans, Wall Street Journal columnist and deputy editor Dan Henninger, assistant editor James Freeman, Washington columnist Kim Strassel and senior economics writer Steve Moore. So, Steve, Fred Thompson has embraced this so-called voluntary flat tax plan. You like it, I kind of like it. Tell our viewers why. Moore: Well, the flat tax is happening all over the world. There are...

Mike Huckabee appeared tonight on CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and once again tried to laugh away his record as governor of Arkansas. Huckabee should stop cracking jokes about raising taxes and start taking responsibility for his actions. Excerpted quotes from Mike Huckabee on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, November 29, 2007 HUCK CHECK #1 : Huckabee claimed that if you dismantle the IRS and implement the Fair Tax, make "the federal government operate more efficiently...[and] get rid of a $10 billion industry." In reality, Huckabee's plan replaces one government bureaucracy with another. * Reality: "It is...

We ended the last century with America's economic might at its zenith, with Americans at their most optimistic, and with nearly all who endeavored to make the most of their opportunities and talents getting ahead in life. John F. Kennedy's declaration that a rising tide will lift all boats was alive and well. Middle-class Americans generate little or no national savings. We've had four straight years of rising productivity and falling incomes. Many Americans are earning less, while the costs of a middle-class life have soared: In the last five years, college costs are up 50 percent, health care up...

Lord knows I have blasted Fred Thompson a few times, but now he has followed his gutsy and philosophically solid Social Security plan and his on-target defense plan, and his hard-nosed immigration plan, with a tax-reform proposal that is deservedly earning plaudits from conservative experts. I repeat my contention that (apart from a certain Huckster) the Republican field this year is in many ways a font of riches rather than a big disappointment. There are at least four candidates whom I personally could support with serious enthusiasm, and another several (counting ones who already have dropped out) who I would...

I've been beating up on Fred recently but like what I see in his tax plan. This strikes me as smart: Expand Taxpayer Choice. The Thompson plan would give Americans greater choice about how to pay their federal taxes. This plan is based on a proposal developed by the House of Representatives Republican Study Committee that would provide taxpayers the option of remaining under the current, complex tax code or opting for a simplified, flat tax code. The simplified tax code would contain two tax rates: 10% for joint filers on income of up to $100,000 ($50,000 for singles) and...

WASHINGTON DC -- Thompson’s appearance on Fox News Sunday this morning was billed by his campaign as an opportunity to rollout a new tax reform proposal, but after talking about taxes for less than three minutes, Thompson shifted the conversation towards the tax benefits of his Social Security plan. Host Chris Wallace then took that as a cue to discuss various criticisms of Thompson’s campaign made by his rivals and Fox’s own conservative pundits.

President to veto flat tax rate and abolition of TV and radio licence 13.11.2007 16:18 It seems that the PO-PSL coalition will have to forget about their pre-election promise of a painless introduction of flat-rate taxation, and they will also face problems getting rid of the TV and radio licence. Michal Kaminski, head of the president’s office told Polish Radio 3 on Tuesday morning that Lech Kaczynski would veto such laws if they were passed by the parliament. Kaminski reminded that the president had previously declared that he would "stand up for the rights of ordinary people" and therefore would...

Anti-war presidential candidate Ron Paul says his campaign is about "restoring the vanishing American dream." And he is criticizing what he calls "the cartel controlling the banking and monetary system" in the United States. Fresh off his third-quarter fundraising surprise of $5 million, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul says the libertarian "revolution" he has started is growing across America. Paul told conservative activists at the "Defending the American Dream Summit" in Washington, DC, that the conference would be more aptly called the "Defending the Vanishing American Dream Summit." The Texas congressman said his Republican rivals often talk about a "flat...

Fiscal Policy: In a free-market revolution sweeping central and eastern Europe, Albania and Bulgaria will become the latest ex-communist states to embrace a low-rate flat tax. To have lived under socialism is to appreciate capitalism. In America, cutting tax rates is an ideological issue. In the former Soviet satellites of Europe, it is increasingly not an issue at all — so obvious is it that it gives people better lives. It began with Estonia in 1994, when Mart Laar as prime minister, thinking he was just emulating the capitalist West, made it the world's first nation in modern times to...

September 6, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The Economic Freedom Network, a global association of research and educational institutes, has just issued its annual report, which rates only one former communist country among the world's top nations with policies that support economic freedom. That country is Estonia. The report has high praise for Estonia, whose economy grew by over 11 percent in 2006. It notes that Estonia performed better not only in comparison with its Baltic neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, but also placed ahead of countries like France and Germany -- not to mention Belgium, Ukraine, or Russia, which are near the...

It wasn't too long ago that Albania was joked about as the last Communist holdout, a kind of Marxist museum. Not anymore. The small Balkan country is about to halve its personal income-tax rate, starting August 1, to a flat 10%. The corporate rate is also slated to drop to 10% in early 2008. Albania's flat tax is the latest sally in an intramural tax competition fueling growth in the former Communist bloc. The trend began with Estonia in 1994 -- then-Prime Minister Mart Laar had read Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" -- and now extends to a dozen nations....

In the post-Soviet era, several former communist countries have enacted pro-capitalist, free market policies that are fueling tremendous economic growth and freedom. This week, Estonia's former prime minister explained the economic miracle that is his country - a country of 17,400 square miles and 1.4 million people with an economy that outshines many of its larger European neighbors. Mart Laar became Estonia's prime minister in 1992. His country was then in shambles, having been ruled by the Soviet Union for 51 years. Shops stood abandoned, housing and highways were crumbling, infrastructure was crippled. It was, in some ways, reminiscent of...

People often laugh when I say on the campaign trail that the tax code should be taken behind the barn and killed with a dull axe. In fact, one man in Iowa was so excited by this proposal that he presented me with an axe before I finished my remarks (fittingly, I was speaking in a barn). There's a reason people welcome my proposal to kill the tax code -- it's a monster of inscrutable complexity, and I say that as a former lawyer who took every tax law class I could. Today's tax code -- which is sixteen times...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani ran into a buzz saw of opposition Saturday when he explained his opposition to a flat federal income tax. Giuliani addressed a group of about 500 people in a standing-room only crowd at a town hall meeting at the University of North Florida, answering questions on a variety of topics from Iraq and Iran to Social Security and his plan for tax cuts. Several dozen people wearing white flat tax T-shirts and hats and carrying signs jeered when Giuliani, in response to a question, said he would not be in favor of...

Giuliani Jeered for Opposing Flat Tax Jul 7 02:16 PM US/Eastern By RON WORD Associated Press Writer JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani drew jeers Saturday for saying he does not think a flat federal income tax is right for the country. At a town hall meeting, several dozen people wearing white flat tax T- shirts and hats and carrying signs expressed their disappointment when Giuliani said he would not favor a flat tax. "I don't think a flat tax is realistic change for America. Our economy is dependent upon the way our tax system operates," the...

The test on tax reform by Richard W. Rahn(commentary from the Washington Times) If politicians tell you they favor "tax reform" and "tax simplification," what do you think they mean? The fact is most politicians, including the current presidential candidates, say they will give us tax reform and simplification, but what they mean differs widely. Each candidate will strive to try to define those words in such a way that will attract more voters than they repel, and some will be sincere (like President Reagan), and some will be less sincere (like the first President Bush and President Clinton). The...

Ronald Reagan said it back in 1983: "Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive... [it] reeks with injustice and is fundamentally un-American... it has earned a rebellion and it's time we rebelled." But what politician would rail against the country's irrational, insufferable, infernal Internal Revenue Code today, except perhaps for ceremonial purposes? Some in Congress have made distinguished careers leading the innocent and unwary through its byzantine ways and byways, occasionally constructing secret passages to favor the special interests they represent. Whole industries like accountancy and tax law have been built on it.

The tripod on which Giuliani is basing his campaign is his reputation as “America’s Mayor� from 9/11, his record as Gotham’s most successful chief executive and – most promisingly from a free market perspective – as an advocate of supply-side economics, which endorses tax cuts to boost economic growth. In this campaign, however, Giuliani is more committed to supply-side economics than ever. He never misses an opportunity to tout his belief in it or make clear his disgust with high taxes. In a recent interview he repeatedly declared, “I don’t like taxes.� He has also committed himself to a “massive...

Rudolph W. Giuliani accepted the endorsement of Steve Forbes yesterday and embraced Mr. Forbes’s signature issue, saying he liked the idea of a flat tax — something Mr. Giuliani denounced when Mr. Forbes was running for president. If there were no federal income tax, “maybe I’d suggest not doing it at all, but if we were going to do it, a flat tax would make a lot of sense,” Mr. Giuliani, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said yesterday, standing beside Mr. Forbes at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square in New York. But he said it was not...

Chris Edwards is director of tax policy studies and author of Downsizing the Federal Government. On St. Patrick's Day, we wear green and celebrate the culture of Ireland. I'll be down at the pub tomorrow, but I'll be toasting Ireland's success at attracting greenbacks -- all that investment flowing into the Emerald Isle and the resulting prosperity. Ireland has boomed in recent years, and it now boasts the fourth highest gross domestic product per capita in the world. In the mid-1980s, Ireland was a backwater with an average income level 30 percent below that of the European Union. Today, Irish...

Sam Brownback, Tiahrt, and the Fairtax Video - Kansas Days 2007 

WASHINGTON (AP) A proposal to impose a flat tax is making a comeback, it's part of Kansas Senator Sam Brownback's campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Pushed by conservatives in the 1990s, a flat tax calls for earned income to be taxed at the same rate instead of the current system of using different tax brackets for different incomes. Brownback calls the current tax code ``dreadful and incomprehensible.'' Best known for his conservative stances on social issues, Brownback also touts himself as the Republican presidential prospect with the truest conservative ideals on fiscal issues as well.

Kansas Days - Fairtax Supporter Internet Radio Show Kansas DaysMeet Sam Brownback and Pat RobertsFairtax Table - We need you supportAnd much more.... Links: http://gopwing.podomatic.com/entry/2007-01-09T17_23_50-08_00 or http://fairtax.podomatic.com/entry/2007-01-09T17_50_01-08_00P.S. Flat (Earth) Taxers need not ping - we deal with you people in another podcast! P.P.S. We need people to join us on TeamSpeak from all fifty states! Listen to podcast for details and forward to all Fairtax supporters you know! 

Fairtax Supporter Radio Show with James Hodges Pilot Vol. 1, 2006 Scott McDonald is a CPA and is currently the Chief Financial Officer of a company in Wichita, KS. He has over 26 years of business and accounting experience. Through this experience, Scott has seen the negative impact on financial decisions due to the current income tax system and also recognizes the amount of wasted resources employed to attempt to comply with the Internal Revenue Code. He also recognizes the dramatic positive impact the Fair Tax will have on the economy.Scott is currently the volunteer Kansas 4th Congressional District Director...

Bumpy Ride for Flat Taxes by Robert Anderson 28 November 2006 Doubts over the benefits of a flat tax are being voiced not just by voters but also by economists. The roles have been reversed: The European Union helped build democracy and free markets in Central Europe, but the region now believes it has lessons to teach its former tutor in both subjects. Central and Eastern European states already pride themselves on giving stronger support to democratization in dictatorships such as Belarus than does Western Europe. Now, the region is in the vanguard of a free-market wave that its proponents...

Eliminating the progressive tax spurs spending and lowers class barriers, thus merging the class divisions and creating a self-sustaining economic growth model. Can you imagine how powerful our economy would be with such open spending? It gives me shivers just thinking about it. Another reason to eliminate the progressive tax would be to eliminate the millions of dollars wasted on tax evasion every year. Everyone, including the IRS, knows that high taxes make the upper class always looking for ways around the system, and that they spend vast sums of money trying to keep it from the taxman. With a...

A CHALLENGE TO H.R. 25 [alleged fair tax] SUPPORTERS What part of our federal Constitution grants power to Congress to lay and collect a “sales tax”? I have been told by some proponents of H.R. 25 to read Article 1, Section 8, but, I do not see “sales tax” in the list of specific taxing powers granted in that part of the Constitution. I guess it’s safe to assume at this point in time the promoters of H.R.25 were pretending that a power was granted to Congress to lay and collect a “sales tax”. In addition, those who promote H.R....

Advocates of replacing the income tax with the FairTax — a consumption tax in the form of a national retail sales tax (NRST) on new goods and services — regularly point to the complexity of the tax code, the millions of hours and dollars wasted on compliance costs, the evils of the withholding tax, and the abuses of the IRS to bolster their case for the FairTax. The twin truths that taxation is theft (no matter how the money is collected) and that the US government should never be given a budget that is in the trillions (no matter how...

I consider myself to be fairly liberal on most issues. So some of you might be surprised that I am about to take a position that’s usually the providence of hardcore conservatives. I support HR25—the Fair Tax Act of 2005. Yeah. The one that would replace virtually the entire tax system with a 23% sales tax. I read about it most recently in an unnecessarily hostile editorial by Matthew Holmes. Truth be told, his article did nothing to convince me that the tax is a good thing. But it convinced me to wade through the full text of the legislation,...

Many of the proposals that are being brought before you have merit. But they have merit in the same sense that treating the symptoms of a serious disease rather than the underlying cause of the disease has merit. If we have no means of treating the underlying disease, then we treat the symptoms in the hope the disease will run its course and the patient will improve. If we have not yet accurately diagnosed the disease, then we alleviate the symptoms until the tests are completed and we can attack the underlying problem. On the other hand, if we understand...

The Senate Finance Committee recently began its tax reform effort in earnest, holding a hearing called "Kick-Off for Tax Reform: Tackling the Tax Code." It certainly needs tackling. The number of pages of federal tax rules exploded to 66,498 in 2006 from 26,300 in 1984, according to a Cato Institute study. Compliance costs with this mass of rules topped $265 billion in 2005, according to the Tax Foundation. While the hearing went mostly unnoticed, it marks the opening of a rare opportunity to enact fundamental tax reform. The chairman of the finance committee, Senator Grassley, set the tone by signaling...

Why NTU Supports the FairTax: The Fair Tax Act of 2005 would promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the States. Legislative Status: Rep. John Linder (GA) introduced H.R. 25 in the House of Representatives on January 4, 2005. Senator Saxby Chambliss (GA) introduced S. 25 in the Senate on January 24, 2005. NTU has endorsed the FairTax since 1998 and continues to work for its adoption Benefits of the FairTax: The FairTax plan brings fairness, transparency,...

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...

We are grateful for the opportunity to expose some of the inequities in the U.S. tax laws. When we began this project, we thought we would highlight a few, mostly wellknown inequities, such as the seemingly interminable inequity between the deductibility of health insurance premiums for the self-employed versus C Corporations. Unfortunately, our investigation uncovered much more. What we found were dozens of sections of the Internal Revenue Code which, on their face, disadvantage small firms. There is little doubt that this is just the surface of the problem. The root causes of these disparities are several.

Why is it that those who work hardest to deny the connection of "economic" and "moral" issues are also the ones who use money to manipulate the moral lives of Americans? The Bush/Forbes vote auction in Ames, Iowa, last weekend was just the latest example of corrosive big money at work in our political process. What could have been a genuine and informative test of grass roots support became instead a Roman circus of dancing girls, free banquets, and deluxe free transportation, as the money candidates worked hard to import enough well-fed and happy bodies to pump up their vote...

FAIRTAX STATUS REPORT The FairTax movement is going strong my friends, stronger than you might imagine. I can assure you that the FairTax is attracting an ever-increasing degree of attention in Washington. I wish I could share the details, but the wonderful world of politics is such that it is much better to let the people involved spill the beans than to jump the gun by disclosing their interest or involvement ahead of time. There have been three events in recent months that have really peaked interest among the political class. First was the debut of The FairTax Book on...

President Bush gave former Sens. Connie Mack of Florida and John Breaux of Louisiana the unenviable task of trying to say something new and interesting about tax reform. When it comes to designing a simple tax system that does the least damage to the economy, it would be difficult to find a better role model than Hong Kong. As The Economist wrote a few years ago, "The territory's tradition of simple and low taxes ... is widely seen as a main reason for its stunning rise to prosperity." Many advantages of the Hong Kong tax system have been widely emulated...

The AMT is viewed by many as a bad thing. Yet, consider this: There is wide agreement among economists on the benefits of a federal "flat tax" on income that would apply a uniform rate to every taxpayer and eliminate most current deductions and tax credits. A flat tax would get rid of a large number of economic distortions resulting from the many tax "subsidies" that often benefit narrow interest groups. This is tax "pork," and Congress is as addicted to it as to the ordinary spending kind.snip . . . If we wait long enough, and with some continuing...

Immediately after President-elect Oscar Arias takes office in Costa Rica on Monday, he will have an historic opportunity to help bring his country into 21st-century competitiveness. The choice? Whether to adopt a national flat tax on corporate and individual income.

The mere mention of today's date on the calendar gives the shakes to millions of tax procrastinators. So we're sorry to report that this filing year the complexities of the tax code got a whole lot worse -- especially for the record number of Americans who will be ensnared by the dreaded alternative minimum tax, or AMT. You know the tax code is headed toward a train wreck when Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill -- who don't agree on much of anything these days -- have both concluded that this shadow tax system must be scrapped. The AMT was...