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your employer is going to have to make a decision. He will either take some or the entire amount he had been withholding for federal income and payroll taxes and add it to your weekly check, or he will readjust your pay figures so that your entire paycheck will be equal to what you used to call "take home pay" before the FairTax. The employer may also decide to do a little of both.

Since a single living in an apartment has fewer deductions and therefore more tax withheld than a married person with a big mortgage, will it be up to the employer to decide who gets his pay cut more? (Sorry Joe, your pay cut is 30% while John's is only 10%. But if you get married I'll give you a 10% raise) What if I'm paying estimated taxes anyway, so I take the maximum number of withholding deductions at my main job? Does that mean I'll end up with a bigger gross after the sales tax than if I set up my taxes to get a big tax refund in April? Or is it more likely that the employers will just give the entire gross to the employees? Especially consider than many employees are under legal contracts for specific wages and there is nothing in the FairTax about voiding those contracts.

I'm glad that Boortz has finally admitted that you can't get both your current gross pay and have net prices including the sales tax stay the same. I've had some people get nasty with me here when I said the employer's embedded tax is only around 9% and there was no way that could jump to 23% based on just inefficiencies in tax collection.

Personally I would prefer a sales tax to the current income tax system. I just never believed that it would be painless and that my net purchasing power would be higher after the tax than before it.

No one can be disadvantaged under a Fair Tax. That's the point in the level that's set. You could set it a lot lower but it won't fly in the real world. Politicians will never support putting the government on a diet. Just ask Tom DeLay about his punch line.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)