One never knows your definition of words... a "wash" to me means the same amount of tax is collected in the aggregate.
IMO that is the case.
The difference I see is that the taxes collected would be collected from a higher number of payers.
eg I no longer have to pay higher taxes to help cover the taxes that aren't being paid by some others...illegals, tourists, importers, criminals.
The number of illegals is how many millions? What if every one of them paid the maximum marginal rate? How much tourist $ is spent in the US? What if it 20% (or whatever the rate ends up being) of it helped pay for government? What if 20% of the price of everything we imported went to pay for government? How much would that reduce the burden of the typical US citizen?
Yeah the amount collected in the aggregate stays constant (revenue neutral), but from more sources. Hence my burden may decrease.
In any given year there are about 50 million foreign tourists (and this doesn't count Canada and Mexico), so let's see if each one spend, say, $1,000 that would represent over $11 Billion in FairTax revenue. Adding Canada and Mexico would bump those numbers even more dramatically I'd think.
IAE it would be a reduction of the tax burden of each US citizen by that much and it's interesting to note that this (excluding Canada and Mexico) at least equals the 2006 budget for the IRS.