[Your Nightmare]

Your numbers are suspect, Nightie, since you've tried to peel the onion too finely and re-combining the numbers leads to cross-tallying and double counting. The Census Bureau Current Population Survey (Mar 2004) for total family household members to be 76,217,000.

You knucklehead. Do you notice the two "Family Household" tables I posted? They total 76,216,000. But single people get the FCA, too. There are 35,783,000 "Non-family Households" (43,881,000 individuals) that you are ignoring.

There actually is an error in my "Non-family Households" table. I erroneously multiplied the FCA by the number of households, not the number of individuals in that household. The total FCA for non-family households would be $94 billion.

This number gives a prebate of a bit over $396 billion rather that the inflated figures you (or your sidekick) offer.

Your method is flawed [what a shock]. The total FCA for families is $363.5 billion. Add $94 billion for the single people and you get $457.5 billion (not the $440 billion I stated).

In any event the prebate is not an entitlement but a refund of tax money to the household much as with the income tax with refunds on Apreil 15. It's ridiculous to try to pretend it is an entitlement - it isn't. You guys are really getting desperate to find something to attack it seems.

No. I'm entitled to the FCA whether I pay a penny in taxes or not. It's not a rebate/prebate/refund/prefund. It's an entitlement!

[pigdog]

Sorry, but it's YOUR method that is flawed [what a shock] since the non-family households cannot be counted. It is a FAMILY Consumption Allowance for families in a single household. So you don't get to throw in your extra numbers to gratuitously inflate the prebate amount by hundreds of millions.

The estimate I gave of about $369 billion is a reasonable number while the $457 and up numbers that you and your sidekick come up with are meaningless.

And the prebate is no entitlement as there is no funding authorization for it in the FairTax law or by means of any separate appropriations bill which there would have to be were it an entitlement. All present entitlements (as you should know) have separate appropriations bills that pop up all the time being raised each time and dipping into money from the income tax.

The prebate is merely a refund of taxes you would have paid were it not issued in advance and it is the corollary of the April 15 tax refund - a return of tax money paid (or in the case of the FairTax to be paid since it is issued in advance). If your April 15 refund were issued in advance there would be no significant difference between the two.