Time to do away with IRS, adopt common-sense sales tax

Chicago Sun Times ^ | April 1, 2006 | LEO LINBECK

[Eaglewatcher]

Faster and faster. Contact your congressperson and tell them that you won't vote for them unless they co-sponsor this bill.

[Principled]

BTTT

[Osage Orange]

I'm convinced this will never happen in my lifetime...and I ain't that old.

[Principled]

Crank up the pinger...

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Appropriately, this was written on April Fool's Day.

[Hank Rearden]

Faster and faster. Contact your congressperson and tell them that you won't vote for them unless they co-sponsor this bill.

The tax code gets more and more complicated, more Americans are snared by the AMT, and what happens? Republicans bloviate about it every year, and the tax-preparer industry continues to grow.

How long have they been in power now? Has our tax system gotten any less complicated or expensive during that time?

What makes you think Republicans will ever do a damn thing about anything they promised to do?

[Lurker]

Can you imagine the horrors which would occur if this country were suddenly burdened with thousands and thousands of unemployed tax attorneys and H & R Block employees?

Why it would be chaos...anarchy....cats and dogs living together...real Wrath Of God type stuff!

You heartless sob you.

L

[longtermmemmory]

NO WAY!

A sales tax makes every person conducting a transaction a tax collector. NO THANK YOU.

What about service transactions? Will then continue to be exempt?

What about food?
What about medicine?

Will some things be taxed more? (remember the yatch tax debacle?)

A national sales tax a no brainer NO NO.

[Hank Rearden]

The 2008 GOP campaign theme: "We promise we won't piss away another 14 years! Really. Trust us."

[Hank Rearden]

It will give people some discretion about when and how much tax to pay - save instead of spend, your taxes go down.

It'll also encourage off-the-books bartering, which I wholeheartedly encourage, because it'll help strangle the immense flow of money to government, which is the only way we'll ever slow the massive spending increases imposed by the Republicans in charge.

Strangle the bastards!

[Hank Rearden]

Another point I forgot: a sales tax puts the outrageous tax theft by Big Stupid Government right in our face.

"What do you mean, those a$$4oles want to take 28% of this transaction?"

Strangle the bastards!

[SittinYonder]

I'm convinced this will never happen in my lifetime...and I ain't that old.

I agree. I first heard of, and became a proponent of, the national sales tax in 1992. While a lot has changed since then, I believe there are too many congressmen getting sweet trips overseas from lobbyists looking for them to support tax breaks.

The congressmen have to have the tax code to monkey around with so they can continue to be powerful and more important than the rest of us.

[Your Nightmare]

And of course, here's Eaglewatcher posting another pointless Op-Ed or Letter to the Editor or some other POS from the FairTax crowd.

Question: if the FairTax is gathering so much momentum, where are the hearings? Where's the real action in Congress? There is a real chance that the Republicans could lose either the House or the Senate in November. They don't seem too hurried to get this thing done. (Could it be that they realize that it would be election year poison?)

What's happening is that there is no one in Congress serious about the FairTax. They just realize that if they give it lip service they will get a few extra votes from the FairTax knuckleheads.

[snowsislander]

The code is so complex that even the Internal Revenue Service fails about half of the time to accurately answer taxpayers' questions, and even H&R Block has been fined for getting its own taxes wrong. This complexity gives rise to another staggering $265 billion a year in tax compliance costs by legions of frustrated citizens and busy auditors, tax preparers, lawyers and corporate compliance specialists.

Our present income tax code would be an embarrassment to the most backward nation on this planet; that a great country such as ours would create and enforce such a system is beyond belief.

A simple national retail sales tax (NRST) would make much more sense. While I imagine it too will soon become the plaything of the lobbyists, at least each of the impacts will be relatively clear each time you make a purchase.

I am no great fan of the FairTax since I don't like the prebate, but since that is the strongest NRST proposal, I do support it.

[snowsislander]

A sales tax makes every person conducting a transaction a tax collector. NO THANK YOU.

In most states, anyone making retail sales is already a retail sales collector. I don't think that the FairTax proposal adds any significant burden to such retailers, although it would impact some retailers in the five (I believe) states that do not currently collect a retail sales tax.

[divine_moment_of_facts]

"Can you imagine the horrors which would occur if this country were suddenly burdened with thousands and thousands of unemployed tax attorneys and H & R Block employees?"

It's about time they got Real Jobs! LOL
A consumption tax might mean we'd actually collect revenue from illegal aliens. We should also tax any money being wired out of this country.

[CrawDaddyCA]

Blah, blah, blah. Every year around this time we see these articles proclaiming the evils of our current system and calls for a different approach.

In the end, it all boils down to the power the current system allows politicians over us, the serfs.

Things will never change.

[TexasTransplant]

>>>"And of course, here's Eaglewatcher posting another pointless Op-Ed or Letter to the Editor or some other POS from the FairTax crowd"<<<<

What is Your Plan, Your Solution?

All you say is NO NO NO like a three year old, so I guess the IRS and the Income Tax is the cart that you wish to be hitched to.

Count me in the FairTax crowd.

TT

[cowtowney]

I see one big advantage to the National Sales Tax in capturing the income of ALL peoples in the US, whether legal or illegal. This will do a lot to asuage those who claim the illegals are not paying their way. The downside would be that the NRST would send money to DC, rather than to the city/county who pays for the schools/hospitals that are being burdoned.

[snowsislander]

What about service transactions? Will then continue to be exempt?

Sorry, I missed this portion. Yes, retail service transactions would be taxable under the FairTax, so that would be a greater burden in those states that do not currently tax retail services.

What about food? What about medicine?

Yes, food and medicine that are sold as retail items would certainly be taxable under the FairTax.

Will some things be taxed more? (remember the yatch tax debacle?

Not under the current version of the FairTax, but it is my belief that it would not take long for the FairTax to have its own long list of exemptions and differential tax rates for different items. (You can see this already in various state tax codes where for instance, staple food items might not be taxable in one state, or there might be a cap on sales tax collected for any one sale in another state.)