Instead what's said - and I've repeatedly stated this (which you've either not noticed or perhaps overlooked) - is that the term "hidden taxes" as many of us use it includes some part of business income taxes, employer portion of fica, compliance costs, opportunity costs, etc. and are more correctly called "hidden tax COSTS", but we often shorten that to say merely "hidden taxes".
The hidden taxes as described in The FairTax Book will most likely largely remain in prices as the employee wages and employee fica portion remain in product costs (as I've also related to you before). You seem to not grasp - or perhaps not wish to admit this for some reason.
"The employer portion of FICA is nowhere to be found in his version of hidden taxes. But he uses all of the above when discussing post-Fair Tax price reduction. "
If you intend both of these sentences to refer to me, then you are completely incorrect as I've repeatedly described what I call "hidden taxes" (really "hidden tax costs" as I've said) to include the ER fica portion and I do not use the employee income tax/fica withholding in any part of the price reduction due to income tax removal.
The money in your bogus lawyer example was money paid by the illegal guy to the lawyer for his services and it was the lawyer paying the tax due to his services, not the illegal guy. In fact as I pointed out, not only did you erroneously double the effective tax rate of your example, you doubled the amount the lawyer paid as well since he paid only $14,000 in income tax (as opposed to fica which HE benefits from, not the illegal guy). So your example is intentionally grossly distorted and your observations in this post are way off he mark.
Second question. If the employee portion of fica and federal income tax withholding are not included in hidden tax costs or hidden taxes, what are they? Doesn't the buyer pay these taxes when they buy the product? Aren't these taxes, therefore, hidden taxes?
So if I go to the store today, buy an item for $100, the store adds $6 sales tax, and I pay them $106., I'm not actually paying that tax? You're saying the store is paying that tax when they forward my $6 to the state?
Do you realize how absolutely ridiculous you sound when you make these arguments of yours? Do you actually expect to be taken seriously on this forum with comments like that?
"you doubled the amount the lawyer paid as well since he paid only $14,000 in income tax (as opposed to fica which HE benefits from, not the illegal guy)."
The lawyer benefits from the fica. Fine. I don't disagree. But who really paid into fica in my example? The same person who paid his income taxes. The drug dealer. The lawyer was only a conduit.
Let's say we did away with taxes altogether. Let's say the federal government was financed by export tariffs.
How much would our lawyer charge the illegal guy to end up with the same amount of disposable income? About 30% less is the answer. Meaning that the federal government is collecting that hidden tax today. I rest my case.