Posted on 12/24/2007 7:55:05 AM PST by Alex Murphy
WASHINGTON — Mike Huckabee, one of the most conservative Republicans in the 2008 presidential race, has embraced one of the most radical ideas on the campaign trail: a plan to abolish all federal income and payroll taxes and replace them with a single 23% national sales tax.
The idea -- dubbed the "fair tax" by proponents -- has been a political asset for Huckabee; its well-organized backers have helped catapult him from the back of the presidential pack to its top tier.
Sales tax proponents have tapped into seething voter hostility toward the Internal Revenue Service to become a below-the-radar political force, popping up at campaign events and candidate forums in Iowa and elsewhere.
The efforts on Huckabee's behalf by sales tax advocates helped spur his surprise second-place showing in an August Iowa straw poll -- the breakthrough that marked the beginning of his rise in the state and nationwide.
He is the only major presidential candidate to make the idea central to his campaign. "The first thing I'd love to do as president: Put a 'going out of business' sign on the Internal Revenue Service," he said at one debate.
Some wonder, however, whether his embrace of the plan eventually could turn into a liability.
The sales tax proposal has been around for years but languished on the fringes of practical politics and policy. Tax professionals generally regard the idea as impractical, regressive and even "crackpot," as one critic puts it.
It has gone nowhere in Congress. The 2005 Presidential Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform soundly rejected the idea. And many politicians shy away from it because it is easy for opponents to portray it as a huge tax increase -- as Democrats did in a 2006 Senate race in South Carolina.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
None of the FairTax is “embedded” as it is with the income tax.
The money in my Flexible Spending Account is pre-tax. Let me know if you can't figure out what that means.
None of his rent is taxed now, like it will be under the FairTax.
And if you retain your "tax-free" money under the income tax when you spend it you'll be paying more for whatever you buy due to tax costs embbedded in prices.
Even if you're not aware of it not only does "his rent" have cost components of the current tax system in it but there are also inflated costs due to the tax cost components in things he buys - and in payroll taxes that he sends Uncle. That money has to come from someplace - and it comes from you.
Read my lips. For the eighth time. I paid no income tax on the money I spend on doctor visits.
Read MY lips ... you paid tax on it under the present set of tax laws. And you’ve never shown us your “1.45% effective tax rate - so we’ll merely not believe that (either).
I paid no income tax on the money I spend on doctor visits.
You will no longer be full income rates on interest-bearing savings and nonqualified dividends. Nor will you pay capital gains taxes. In addition, the items retirees buy all the time will not have multiple tiers of taxation built in during the process of producing them.
Right. It will simply be the much higher rate of 30%.
“Social Security is an entitlement. Not funded each term. Try again?”
I sure feel better knowing there is a Social Security lock box!
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