Does the FairTax burden the retail industry?
All businesses are tax collectors today. They withhold income and payroll taxes from their employees. Moreover, the vast majority of retail businesses operating in states with a sales tax (45 states currently use a sales tax) are already sales tax collectors. Under the FairTax, retailers are paid a fee equal to one-quarter of one percent of federal sales tax they collect and remit. In addition, of course, retailers no longer bear the cost of complying with the income tax, including the uniform capitalization requirements, the various depreciation schemes, and the various employee benefit and pension rules. Finally, the economic growth resulting from the aggregate, beneficial effects of dramatically lower income tax compliance costs and no payroll or income taxes, customers having substantially more money — the greatest influence on retail sales — and a reasonable fee for collecting the FairTax, all ensure that retailers do quite well.
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers#24
Yes I am aware of these facts and I consider all of them bad ideas.
Each individual should be responsible for paying his own taxes. The first rule of fighting tyranny is to be aware of its existence. The current tax load on Americans is a tyranny that most Americans are unaware of because they do not consciously pay those taxes.
Simply paying the merchant to be a tax collector does not make it ok. The fact that he already collects taxes for his own state does not make it right. Whether he is paid for his time or not does not change the fact that it takes part of the time he could better spend on other things.
Certainly the tax codes of the Federal and State governments need to be simplified down to single pages. In the corporate tax area I believe it should be simplified to no pages.
But first and foremost I believe that unless the 16th amendment is repealed I do not want the Federal government getting access to another tax stream. After the 9-9-9 law is signed by President Cain what is to stop a latter congress and later president from enacting a 21-21-21 tax? Answer: Nothing.
Don’t get me wrong I like Cain much better than Romney or Perry but the 9-9-9 plan does not appeal to me for many reasons. If we are going to have major tax reform let’s go for the gold ring; let’s have a flat tax that is easy to understand and is totally out in the open.
Everyone will understand exactly what is owed and what they are paying. Everyone will have “skin” in the game, no one is exempt down to the lowest wage earner. There will no avoiding taxes because there are no loop holes. And best of all everyone will be against tax increases because they will know exactly what it is going to cost them.