Posted on 04/04/2006 2:17:28 PM PDT by Eaglewatcher
The FairTax (HR 25 in the US House and S 25 in the US Senate) is a federal retail sales tax that replaces the entire federal income and Social Security tax systems, including personal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security/Medicare, self-employment, and corporate taxes. The FairTax allows Americans to keep 100 percent of their paychecks (minus any state income taxes), ends corporate taxes and compliance costs hidden in the retail cost of goods and services, and fully funds the federal government while fulfilling the promise of Social Security and Medicare.
More FairTax benefits:
No tax on used goods. No tax on business inputs. With the FairTax, if you choose to buy any new good or service, the sales tax is charged just as state sales taxes are computed today. If you choose to buy used goods - used car, used home, used appliances - you do not pay the FairTax. If, as a business owner or farmer, you buy something for strictly business purposes (not for personal consumption), you pay no FairTax. So, in deciding what to buy, you get to choose whether or not you pay the FairTax.
No federal sales tax up to the poverty level means progressivity like today's tax system. Furthermore, to ensure that no American pays tax on necessities, the FairTax plan provides a prepaid, monthly rebate for every registered household to cover the consumption tax spent on necessities up to the federal poverty level. This, along with several other features, is how the FairTax completely untaxes the poor, lowers the tax burden on most, while making the overall rate progressive. However, the FairTax is progressive based on lifestyle/spending choices, rather than simply punishing those taxpayers who are successful. Do you see how much freer life is with the FairTax instead of the income tax?
All Americans take home their whole paychecks. Not only do more Americans have jobs, but they also take home 100 percent of their paychecks (except where state income taxes apply). No federal income taxes or payroll taxes are withheld from paychecks, pensions, or Social Security checks. Retail prices no longer hide corporate taxes or their compliance costs, which drive up costs for those who can least afford to pay. Did you know that hidden income taxes and the cost of complying with them currently make up 20 to 30 percent of all retail prices? It's true. According to Dr. Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University, hidden income taxes are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices - from 20 to 30 percent higher than they would otherwise be - for everything you buy.
Tax criminals - don't make criminals out of honest taxpayers. Today, the IRS admits to 25 percent non-compliance with the code. However, this does not take into account the criminal/drug/porn economy, which conservative estimates put at one trillion dollars of untaxed activity. The FairTax taxes those engaged in the underground economy capturing their income at the cash register. The substantial decrease in points of compliance - from every wage earner, investor, and retiree, down to only retailers - also allows enforcement to concentrate on following the money to criminal activity, rather than making potential criminals out of every taxpayer struggling to decipher the code.
The income tax exports our jobs, rather than our products. The FairTax brings jobs home. Most importantly, U.S. exports are not burdened by the FairTax, as they are with the current income tax. So the FairTax allows U.S. exports to sell overseas for prices 22 percent lower, on average, than they do now, with similar profit margins. Lower prices sharply increase demand for U.S. exports, thereby increasing job creation in U.S. manufacturing sectors. At home, foreign imports are subject to the same FairTax rate as domestically produced goods. Not only does the FairTax put U.S. products sold here on the same tax footing as foreign imports, but the dramatic lowering of compliance costs in comparison to other countries' value-added taxes also gives U.S. products a definitive pricing advantage which foreign tax systems cannot match.
YOU are in charge! The FairTax moves us from a system that taxes what we earn to a system that taxes what we spend. Under the FairTax, you control your tax liability, not the government. The FairTax puts "we the people" in charge of our money, and puts us all on the path to economic freedom!
To enact the FairTax and unleash the full economic potential of the U.S., we must apply Vocal and Persistent pressure on Congress each week.
Email, call or fax your members of Congress today. Send them this simple message: "Please support replacing the federal income tax code and become a co-sponsor of HR 25 or S 25, the FairTax."
Socialist claptrap. Taxation is theft
Guess the founders of this nation were socialists then as taxation is the method provided for in the Constitution for payment of the nation's debts, providing for the common defense and general welfare as it is delimited by the enumerated powers of Congress under Article II Section 8 of said Constitution.
You definition of loophole is fine, however your application of it misses the point.
The point is much larger than "used" versus "new". The point is that humans adapt. Every legal behavior that people adopt to avoid the tax will be labeled a "loophole" in the future.
Hardly, as the tax where "used property" is concerned is a non-sequiter. It has already been paid, there is nothing left to avoid.
Apparently you believe they ought to be tax one or more times, so just how many times do you figure any product ought to be taxed by the federal government...
Zero.
Which puts you in a camp outside of conservatism, as taxation is the mode established under Article I section 8 of the Constitution and consumption taxation in its multiple forms are very clearly established in our debate histories as the preferred candidate for generating revenue for fund government.
Sorry, don't buy your cant of taxes are theft. More a tax protest/anarchist's position than one of a rational position taken from Constitutional considerations. Taxation is the obvious chosen method of financing government by the founders of this nation and a conservative approach to funding government constrains itself to the remedies provided for in the constitution..
Thanks for letting us know where you actually are coming from which has nothing to do with tax reform, and more to do with a system totally in opposition to basic provisions for funding in our Constitution.
On the contrary, the fact that you're willing to keep playing the politicians' game is exactly what empowers them.
Many politicians don't' even read the bills before they vote on them. Sort of like you on this thread, spaghetti boy*; you do a lot of politician-like pontificating without having read the the FairTax bill, (H.R.25).
*[ Spaghetti boy. Like throwing spaghetti at a wall to see if it sticks; a person that throws arguments into a thread to see if anything sticks. ]
Well all you need is a couple hundred more.
23% on EVERYTHING is more noticable than 7.25% ? Ya think ?
The grass roots movement is leading politicians to support the FairTax or be voted out of office. The electorate is retaking the lead as master and putting politicians back in their place as servants.
Actually, my point was that this "dodge" would be still-born due to the minimum auditing practice I would expect from any State FairTax enforcement agency. I do not think it would be a matter of waiting for a new dodge to pop up and new legislation to counter it.
The simpicity of the FairTax means a relatively short set of regs to make it tight. Compared to the 60,000 pages the income tax code relies on.
What's taking so long? We have been talking about this tax scam since 1998.
What's taking so long?
Waiting for you to grow up. Hurry up would ya.
We have been talking about this tax scam since 1998.
Actually, I've been talking about the FairTax while you've been banging you head against the wall flailing away at boogiemen.
Childish innuendo in lieu of rational answers is not going to help you work this con.
No, there is a difference between not understanding an issue and refusing to see what's in front of you and making things up that aren't there.
What game? How am I playing it?
You want to continue to empower them. I want to take that power away. They want to hide the cost of government. I want to expose it.
You seem to have more in common with them than I do.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
"This is going to look like a "double tax" scam to a hell of a lot of people."
Only the uninformed.
"If someone wants to sell real estate or stock investments purchased and paid for with money that was already taxed, so they can spend the money, who is going to tell them they can not?"
This sentence makes no sense. Please clarify what you are trying to say.
Argumentum ad verecundium doesn't cut any ice with me. The founders did an admirable job of escaping the statist thinking of their age. They were minarchists, by and large. Minarchists and anarcho-capitalists can have friendly discussions over coffee.
If the founders saw what their creation has become, they'd march on Washington with muskets blazing.
Which puts you in a camp outside of conservatism...
Special pleading never cut any ice with me. Call me a "purple penguin party" man if it pleases you.
You keep posting. I hope it's fun for you. I have no intention of discussing anything further with you, on the grounds that you are not only an idiot, but a juvenile, uninteresting one.
You are not reckoning with the ingenuity of people. People will find lots of interesting loopholes, all of which will be plugged by increasingly contorted legislation.
Also note that there are various exemptions spelled out in the legislation itself. Those exemptions will be tweaked continually, just like the tax incentives of the current plan.
How exactly are you "taking their power away"? They conitnue to spend trillions; they continue to be the ones making the laws. So long as that's true, the details of some particular law is irrelevant. You're missing the forest for the trees.
You seem to have more in common with them than I do.
You believe in their fundamental right to pass laws. I believe it's high time to abolish it. You lobby them to change their oppression a teensy bit. I want to see them shut down entirely. Your statement is ridiculous.
With the sales tax politicians do not have to increase taxes, bureaucrats do it automatically. If SS needs more money, the sales tax rate AUTOMATICALLY rises to meet the need. Don't worry, the sales tax won't put politicians out of business. They will add more items to items that are exempt. The fairtax bill already exempts education and i think even internet access, so why not add some more. The will fiddle with the rates. They will change the prebate and perhaps add some means testing to it.
Childish innuendo in lieu of rational answers is not going to help you work this con.
Okay, I'll drop the sarcasm and be sincere and honest. Your repeatedly claiming the FairTax is a scam and now a con are lies and you are due zero respect in response. Plus, your outrageous sensationalism further discredits you.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.