First of all your taxes presently are NOT zero - you merely think they are (and you're assuming that none of your investment money will ever yield taxable results which may or may not be true); your current taxes are in fact a good bit more than zero since there are hidden taxes embedded in all that you buy (whether used or not). In #220 I was illustrating your spending the entire $40,000 for taxable things under the FairTax (not the income tax) - a worst case scenario.
When income taxes go away with the FairTax, prices will drop (before being taxed again with the FairTax). There is a 7.65% amount in the employer's portion of payroll taxes plus the amount of business income taxes plus compliance costs all embedded into prices presently. These become zero under the FairTax and you may get the $4,508 prebate amount for the year which helps make your EFFECTIVE tax rate under the FairTax 11.73% even when you spend the entire $40,000 on taxable things.
I also showed that your purchasing power will increase under the FairTax meaning that you can buy more "stuff" with the same amount of money. If the price decrease caused by removing the income tax system amounts to only 12% you'll have the purchasing power increase as pointed out in #222. Nowhere in either post did I say your taxes would be 20% - where did that come from?
And read what I said in #222 more closely, I did not say that prices would drop and remain there after income tax removal. I said that in that case prices would drop when the income tax went away and THEN with the advent of the FairTax the total amount you'd pay including the FairTax) would go back up but that this would be offset by both the price decrease from the IT removal AND the receipt on your part of the prebate (the $4,508 figure for 2006), making your purchasing power increased as I showed in #222. That's certainly neither magic nor hard to understand (unless you wish not to for some reason).
You'd get a much better insight into the benefits of the FairTax by spending a bit of time on FairTax website.
There's lots of helpful information there on many, many different topics. Check the FAQs and Rebuttals for example.
I never said all my taxes were zero, just my income tax.
your current taxes are in fact a good bit more than zero since there are hidden taxes embedded in all that you buy (whether used or not). In #220 I was illustrating your spending the entire $40,000 for taxable things under the FairTax (not the income tax) - a worst case scenario.
Sales taxes and embedded taxes in my purchase price, right?
I also showed that your purchasing power will increase under the FairTax meaning that you can buy more "stuff" with the same amount of money.
So, my income increases (income and Soc Sec taxes now zero), prices will fall (that's what you mean by increased purchasing power) and I get a prebate?
Does the FairTax raise the same revenues for the government?