I told my son-in-law while he was a raging Clinton liberal in college a few years ago that someday we would talk about the "Hertz Donut".
4th of July we were just chatting about stuff, his new job as a pharmaceutical rep came up and he started complaining about taxes:
"TD, they're taking about *half* what I make!"
My response: "Hurts, don't it?"
Is he married, have any kids, and what CBO quintile does his gross income (includes all forms of income) fall into:
Q1 = $14,800 Q2 = $34,100 Q3 = $51,900 Q4 = $77,300 Q5 = $184,500
With this approximate information we can give you a very close assessment of how his purchasing power will increase or decrease under the FairTax compared to the income tax - and it's almost always an increase. This allows each person to get a good reading of the effect of the FairTax on a particular income situation. The quintiles shown are from the COB effective tax rate structure for 2003 - the most current one.