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."
that certainly is not a bastardization of the language at all. It is quite correct.
There's nothing voluntary about the income tax since the very act of earning income has some goodly part of it confiscated with no alternative on your part. With the FairTax you DO have a choice of when and how much you pay in tax by controlling your consumption - and some things are not taxed at all.
In addition, income including income from investment is not taxed helping you to climb a bit up the economic ladder. That's not true with the income tax.
No, I believe you're misunderstanding what he said.
Perhaps you should read the bill and draw your own conslusions:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.25:
No, you don't see the mechanism. The amount of tax is required to be shown separately on the required receipt. It is in no way hidden or embedded. It is however a part of what you pay under the FairTax while under any income tax system the amount is both hidden and embedded in an unknown amount.
I think you should read the bill to see the required receipt for each taxable purchase. It's in Sec. 509 or so.
... and you're "Right" (/sarc) about your own part of the housing biz, too, but can't (won't) see that.
As for the illegal economy, they presently pay little or nothing in the way of tax "contributions" but with the FairTax they will pay the full FairTax rate with each taxaable purchase - just like the rest of us. And many of them will not be eligible for the prebate, either.
Nothing fair about that since you pay no tax at all, Rightie.
With the FairTax even though you may get a prebate, every taxable purchase you make contributes sales tax to the revenue box even though you get some back as the prebate.
With the income tax you have others bearing your tax burden since you pay no tax at all.
Been doing that since 1999; that's how all the flaws with the scheme have come to light.
First of all, the prebate is not a welfare redistribution program, but a return of some part of the tax you have paid. It's much like receiving your April 15th income tax refund.
And secondly it's probably not a "check" at all but a wire transfer.
It's not a "promise" - it's law ... part and parcel of the FairTax bill. You should educate yourself by reading the bill.
Well, Rightie, if so (and I doubt that greatly) the government will not be interacting with and terrorizing the individual taxpayer - the one who does the consuming, but merely on those businesses who are PAID to collect and report the tax.
I'm not certain who you are talking about; but, you are correct if you assume one was reading only the "fair tax" propaganda but most people I know like to examine all opinions concerning these issues.
It's unbelievable that you've been opposing the FairTax on these threads for years now and still do not admit or realize (don't know which) that a VAT is a totally different type of tax form from a true consumption tax sush as the FairTax.
You still incorrectly try to equate them (and Greenspan does not support a VAT).
Sorry, Rightie, the prebate amount is already encompassed in the FirTax bill so there's no additional "xxx gazillion" involved at all.
Check the action of the AMT which is some circumstances violate your premise by inflating the tax due since the alter the definition of taxable income. Things that most would not consider "income" are taxed, boosting the effective tax rate hugely - in some cases, almost beyond belief. Go read some of the horor stories about the AMT on the Tax Panel's website.
And you obviously miss the point that with the FairTax the tax is separately and clearly stated rather than hidden and embedded within the price in some unknown amount.
The FairTax requires the tax to be separately stated from the product cost and it is therefore not hidden or embedded. Certainly the taxpayer (the consumer) is the one who eventually pays the tax in either case, but with the income tax the amount is both hidden in the product price and embedded therein where with the FairTax the tax amount is not embedded or unknown at all (and will be less than the tax presently - which is partly hidden ... over and above the income tax itself).
That's a huge difference and I fail to see how the embeddment of the tax is not, thereby, avoided. I also fail to see what sort of "loopholes" you think you have conjured up that are not dwarfed by the existing tax system.
There are more than 21 million illegal aliens (and not the ridiculous 10 or 11 million the government throws around) and those folk alone represent a huge amount of tax revenue as do drug dealers and others currently not hit by the income tax.
Nothing that could be devised under the FairTax in the way of some black market goods operation - NOTHING!!! - would even come close under the FairTax. And that's ignoring the many other forms of tax evasion that go on under the income tax at present which even the IRS admits is huge.
Just a note, pigdog: if you wonder why I ignore your posts, it's because you don't exist.
More willful blindness.
Yes the tax will raise the price, but competition will also play a huge part IN LOWERING THE PRICE! The tax component of priceing will be GONE!
Can't you understand that?
Next, there is the prebate that covers spending up to the poverty level so people will have more money to spend.
Can't you understand that?
Third, workers will get their WHOLE paycheck. Take home pay will be almost the same as gross pay (State and voluntary deductions will remain) so workers will have more money to spend.
Can't you understand that?
Savings and investments will no longer be taxed. No gift tax. No inheritance tax. No self employment tax. No FICA tax. People will not be losing money to the tax man for doing nothing more than earning and saving their money.
Those who are working will have plenty of work because the economy will flourish once the chains are removed. Investments will be worth more and return on investment will increase as a result.
More world wide companies will open plants here because they will not be taxed.
Good God, man. If you can't see the benefits of a program like this, I don't know what it will take to open your eyes.
No, I think you still miss my point. All I can recommend is that you read it again. The person I initially posted it to understood what I was saying.
I couldn't care less whether you "ignore" my posts or not ... that merely proves your ignorance of the FairTax and how it works - and proves your bias against it as well.
I understand your point perfectly as my post #334 indicates.
I merely think it has no real meaning since all taxes are eventually paid by taxpayers (people). Most people would rather know how much tax they are really paying rather than be fooled (as under the prexent system) even if the amount is .
Knowing the actual amount helps lead o a better judgement by the taxpayers that taxes are far too high and allows them to put more forceful pressure on politicians to reduce both spending and taxes. Hiding them as does the present system merely obscures that and helps the pols.
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