[lucysmom]

?E??§?e Treasury Department agrees with me that tax evasion will increase under the FairTax.

Their estimates have several flaws. Most notably, despite the fact that the FairTax has several features that tend toward reducing evasion (simplicity, lower marginal rates, drastic reduction in collection points, and greater likelihood of getting caught),the Treasury Department analysts assumed that the rate of evasion would be twice what it is for the income tax, i.e.,the current system rate is 15 percent so they used a 30 percent rate for the FairTax.

Anyone with half a brain and a little imagination can see that features claimed by Fairtax supporters to reduce evasion are way to narrow to enforce the compliance they predict. Sooner or later broad evasion will have to be addressed if the FairTax is enacted; care to guess what enforcement tools will be used?

[pigdog]

Treasury merely ASSUMED evasion would double from the 15% they now think it is. In fact, they haven't a clue as to what if really is (and it is clearly much greater than "15%" due to the illegal economy), nor do they have any rational, definitive basis for saying "30%" under the FairTax. They're merely pulling numbers out of the staffers pockets/purses to get some tripe out to the Tax Panel (which by that time they no doubt realized didn't matter anyway).

You keep yammering on endlessly (and senselessly) about "broad evasion" and "widespread black markets" while never defining them nor giving any concrete examples of what those would be in detail nor how they would operate under the FairTax.

Unfortunately for you (since you've not read the bill) you have no clue as to what enforcement tools are available under the Fairtax, but they certainly are there. And in addition, the state sales tax authorities have some of their own also.