Right, fine for the W-2ers, of which I also am, but I still need to record my mileage, 59 cent reciept for paperclips, figure our personal vs. business use of my cell phone, calculate home office deductions, etc. for my real estate business. It is a real pain to track all that stuff, and then have to explain it all to an auditor who ends up disagreeing with legitimate deductions on a whim.
With an NRST, OTOH, every business owner in the US will be faced with audits of their receipts and tax collections. The IRS may be renamed but there will still be jobs for all those bureaucrats checking on compliance with their new tax collectors, ie, the businessman.
NSRT is much easier to track than all the above under Income Tax. For example, if I rent houses, I have only 12 transactions per year to report and track per house. I probably have 50 or more recipts or other transactions I have to tabulate to figure my net income, many of which are hard to document and easy to loose as a deduction during an audit. Plus, it shifts the burdon of proof. Instead of me having to prove a deduction, they have to prove I recieved more income than I reported.
Very good points all and, if anything, understated. Any tax form retaining income tax as a base is just - by definition - rife with difficulty of the taxpayer having to prove his innocence. Having income tax means having this continued intrusiveness.
I don't think that for most of the FairTax supporters that it is so much a question of the amount of taxes paid (since the FairTax is revenue neutral) as it is a disgust with the sorts of things you outline and just the general lack of the freedom under an income tax. Alan Keyes calls it a "slave tax" - the slaves being the taxpayers and the masters the federal government. It's time to change that.
The FairTax is non-partisan and any wage-earner in a union (or elsewhere) should be delighted with the benefits of the FairTax.