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If you're going to stick with this embedded tax example to make a case that the drug dealer is somehow already paying income tax then that means those of us that have federal income taxes withheld from our paychecks and then purchase goods with the remainder are paying double, triple, quadruple, ad infinitum.

No, you aren't being taxed twice. You are working for your take-home pay, your employer is sending the income tax and payroll taxes that you are having withheld and paying them for you. These costs are in the costs of the products that your employer sells, and they are being paid by the customers of that business.

So, all the taxes are really already being paid as a consumption tax, when you buy goods and services you pay the taxes embedded in the items. If you didn't make the purchase, the good or service would not be manufactured or performed, and the employer would need fewer employees.

And any amount of wages (including fica) is part of the price of the product rather than just additional tax cost embedded. The product price, then has whatever the merchant's profit might be and it is this amount upon which income taxes are levied to the merchant. If this is a 15% profit margin and the merchant's effective income tax rate is 25%, then the "income tax contribution" by the purchaser is 3.75% under the income tax and it would be 23% at the marginal FairTax rate. Note that this is NOT the embedded tax, but merely the tax attributed to a consumer purchase. The embedded tax is a smaller amount yet.

"... all the taxes are really already being paid as a consumption tax, when you buy goods and services you pay the taxes embedded in the items ..."

Claiming there is some sizable amount of income tax paid by a consumer when a consumer purchases under the income tax is - as was shown just above - spurious. Claiming that the item would not be made if the consumer didn't buy it is also spurious. And no, your employer doesn't "pay" your taxes - he only withholds marginal income tax/fica rates and forwards them as the law requires (so you can't get your hands on them). You still file income tax forms and "pay" your own taxes.

No, you aren't being taxed twice. You are working for your take-home pay, your employer is sending the income tax and payroll taxes that you are having withheld and paying them for you. These costs are in the costs of the products that your employer sells, and they are being paid by the customers of that business.

So, all the taxes are really already being paid as a consumption tax, when you buy goods and services you pay the taxes embedded in the items. If you didn't make the purchase, the good or service would not be manufactured or performed, and the employer would need fewer employees.

You're contradicting yourself.

Which is it. Am I paying embedded taxes or not, or, in some strange twist of the universe, do only those that do not pay income taxes somehow pay embedded taxes, such as our heroic drug dealer, and those that pay imcome taxes do not pay embedded taxes on purchased goods.

The IncomeTax cult is like Islam, but without the suicide bombers.