Rates and schemes with rebates are just devices to con folks into thinking the other guy is getting hit while you are special.
We need to all get the same tax bill for the same amount, when the politicians want to raise taxes it will be for everyone, no dividing and conquering the population.
Ummm...yeah. I would imagine tax "professionals" would ay it is impractical - it would put them out of a job.
But I am curious where the 23% figure comes in. By my very rough and uneducated guess, if the Federal Government were limited to Constitutional bounds, the Federal Government could be funded with as little as a 5-6% sales tax. And with that budget, we could have a superior military and lots more true freedom than we experience today.
And of course, that still leaves quite a few states still stealing a % of our paychecks for state income taxes (on top of up to 10%+ in sales tax already).
Everyone hates the income tax, but no one with a brain would stand for what would be really be a 30% sales tax...socialist prebate (welfare) or not.
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I’m in favor of anything that puts the abolition of income tax on the table for serious discussion. Plant that seed.
But after that...no 23%. It would soon rise. Moreover, legitimate govt functions may be fundable by donation. Let’s try that. Cut the foreign aid, the public and private education funding, the arts funding, to name but a few among thousands. While we’re at it, impose term limits on the spenders and a strict curfew (so they can’t even show their thievin’ selves in public in Washington except on rare occasions when Congress actually needs to act!)
Cut their d-— salaries to the bone too.
23% on consumption would be more stiffiling to the economy than a 17% income tax....on all earners. The 17% might even be lowered after we see the amount of revenue it generates.
A tax on consumption replacing the income tax is also unfair to the retired folks that normally do not pay income tax.
A side point, Flat Tax would let the IRS survive....albeit in much diminished mode. I don't think the Democrats will ever vote to eliminate the IRS, and unfortunately we need their votes to pass anything.
And, I doubt that even a 23% Sales Tax would eliminate the IRS. A huge underground economy would spring up to avoid paying the sales tax. The IRS might even become bigger - someone would have to police transactions to see that the "Fair" tax is paid.
Right now all they have to do is keep track of each employee....under a "Fair" tax they would want to know how many groceries you buy and how many times you eat out, when you bought a car and took the dog to the vet!
(Huckabee)
I support the FairTax.
As Governor of Arkansas, I cut taxes and fees almost 100 times, saving the taxpayers almost $380 million. I left a surplus of nearly $850 million, which I urged should go back to the people.
Our massive deficit is not due to Americans’ being under-taxed, but to the government’s over-spending.
To control spending, I believe the President should have the line-item veto.
I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade.
Globalization, done right, done fairly, can be the equivalent of a big pay raise by allowing us to buy things more cheaply.
I’d like you to join me at the best “Going Out of Business” sale I can imagine - one held by the Internal Revenue Service. Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly. But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all - personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment. All our hours filling out forms, all our payments for help with those forms, all our shopping bags filled with disorganized receipts, all our headaches and heartburn from tax stress will vanish. Instead we will have the FairTax, a simple tax based on wealth. When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness.
The FairTax will replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax, like the taxes on retail sales forty-five states and the District of Columbia have now. All of us will get a monthly rebate that will reimburse us for taxes on purchases up to the poverty line, so that we’re not taxed on necessities. That means people below the poverty line won’t be taxed at all. We’ll be taxed on what we decide to buy, not what we happen to earn. We won’t be taxed on what we choose to save or the interest those savings earn. The tax will apply only to new goods, so we can reduce our taxes further by buying a used car or computer.
Our current progressive tax system penalizes us for working harder and becoming more successful. As we climb the ladder, the government lurks on each rung, hungry for a bigger bite out of our earnings. The FairTax is also progressive, but it doesn’t punish the American dream of success, or the old-fashioned virtues of hard work and thrift, it rewards and encourages them. The FairTax isn’t intended to raise any more or less money for the federal government to spend - it is revenue neutral.
Expert analyses have shown that the FairTax lowers the lifetime tax burden of all of us: single or married; working or retired; rich, poor or middle class.
The FairTax will instantly make American products 12 to 25% more competitive because the cost of those goods will no longer be inflated by corporate taxes, costs of tax compliance, and Social Security matching payments. When we buy products now, those taxes are built into the cost, so all of us pay corporate taxes indirectly on top of the personal taxes we pay directly. Compliance costs are just make-work with no real added value, yet they consume as much as 3% of our gross domestic product annually. These costs are an especially heavy burden on small businesses, which generate most of our jobs.
If you buy a bottle of domestic wine, you’re paying the taxes/compliance/matching payments of all the folks who produced the grapes, the wine, the bottle, the cork, the label. If you buy a bottle of French wine, the producers had their Value Added Tax rebated to them when the wine was exported. So French consumers pay those taxes, but you don’t. Our current tax system puts our goods at a disadvantage both here and overseas. Other governments give their goods an advantage on the world market, an advantage estimated at 18% compared to American goods.
So no matter how hard Americans work, no matter how innovative and creative we are, no matter how superior our products are, we suffer from a built-in competitive disadvantage simply because of our tax system. A recent study by MIT found that our tax system deprives us of about $1 billion in exports annually. When you export over-priced goods as we have, you inevitably end up exporting jobs and industries as we now are. We are the square peg trying to fit into the round hole of international trade. The rest of the world isn’t going to change, it’s time that we do.
Under the FairTax, American companies are far less likely to move overseas and foreign companies are far more likely to come here, hiring Americans to build and work in their new plants. The FairTax encourages growth by promoting investment and capital formation.
We have to scrap a 20th century tax system that is holding us back and keeping us down in the 21st century. The FairTax is the path to greater prosperity and job security for us and for our children.
As Governor of Arkansas, I pushed through the Arkansas Legislature the first major, broad-based tax cuts in state history - a $90 million tax relief package for Arkansas families. I also doubled the standard deduction to $2,000 for single taxpayers and $4,000 for those who are married. Some taxes I eliminated entirely: the marriage penalty, bracket creep caused by inflation, income tax on poor families, and capital gains on home sales. To encourage investment, I cut capital gains for both individuals and businesses. To help people better themselves, I provided tax credits for employee training and education. In total, I cut taxes and fees nearly 100 times during my ten-and-a-half years as Governor, saving the people of Arkansas almost $380 million.
When I left office in early 2007, Arkansas had nearly $850 million in state surplus, which I urged should go back to the people in the form of either a tax rebate or tax cut.
I believe that our massive deficit is not due to Americans’ being under-taxed, but due to the federal government’s over-spending. Achieving and maintaining a balanced federal budget is an important and worthy goal necessary to our long-term economic well-being. To achieve a balanced federal budget, I believe the President should have the line-item veto.
I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade. We are losing jobs because of an unlevel, unfair trading arena that has to be fixed. Behind the statistics, there are real families and real lives and real pain. I’m running for President because I don’t want people who have worked loyally for a company for twenty or thirty years to walk in one morning and be handed a pink slip and be told, “I’m sorry, but everything you spent your life working for is no longer here.”
I believe that globalization, done right, done fairly, can be a blessing for our society. As the Industrial Revolution raised living standards by allowing ordinary people to buy mass-produced goods that previously only the rich could afford, so globalization gives all of us the equivalent of a big pay raise by letting us buy all kinds of things from clothing to computers to TVs much more inexpensively
I am retired and pay no income tax. I will vote for Hillary before I would vote for a 23% tax on consumption.
Yeah, I stopped right there.
I stopped reading after the first sentence. Huckabee is far from conservative with his tax record, support for socialized medicine (See SCHIP), his support for closing Gitmo so we can make the muslim extremists happy, his Global Warming© support, and the MoveOn.org style attacks on President Bush.
Twenty-three percent is B/S. Since we are told this is now a Service Economy, tax services as well - every stock transaction, wire transfers of money, legal and other other professional fees, etc. Bet we could get the tax down to single digits. Exempt food and medicines - everything else gets it, including home purchases.
The approach should be that “we don’t care how you got it, we’ll get you when you spend it”. Money recouped from the Underground Economy would regain a big chunk also.
He’s off my Christmas list. A whole life of working and paying massive income tax and he want me to now pay tax again when I use my savings to enjoy retirement. Taxed twice. Wonderful.
I have two problems with this.
1) I wouldn’t vote for a guy solely on the Fair Tax because I don’t think you’ll ever convince Congress to go along with it so you’d better have other reasons why you’d want that guy elected.
2) If you ever got the Democrats to *agree* to implementing the Fair Tax, they would probably keep the 23% sales tax and also find some way to keep the income tax it was meant to replace.
We saw this in Texas one time when the liberals were all in favor of the new tax. They just didn’t want to eliminate the old tax. Anyone in Congress that is reading this, make SURE you write the bill so they have to eliminate the old tax at the same time they are implementing the new tax. And don’t think for a minute some of us won’t be watching you.
Did Huck actually say 23%?
I’m getting more than a little sick of these politicians of BOTH party’s coming up with these, self serving, radical plans of reform in government.
They proclaim their grandiose plans as if congress doesn’t even exist. They pander to the population claiming they will give all of us FREE health care, FREE health insurance, FREEDOM from taxes, building secure borders, the list goes on and on and on.
They want to treat everyone like fools and want us to believe all you have to do is ELECT US and it will be done as soon as we take office. All one has to do is look at the past and the success of any of their BIG PLANS have had.
Everyone should hear what all the candidates would LIKE to do, what their core belief’s are but DON”T MAKE PROMISES you can’t or won’t deliver.
Our own party candidates should never try to compare themselves to Ronald Reagan unless they are prepared to stand by their promises and deliver. The candidate who can show the country his CORE BELIEF’S and a HISTORY of those beliefs will, eventually, rise to the top or fall to the bottom.
The Huckster is only for the “Fair Tax” as a red herring, to divert attention away from his own record as a tax raiser.
23%?
A bit excessive. Consumptio, other than essential articles would fall off significantly and hurts the folks most in need of tax relief - the low to ultra-low income earners.
The law of un-intended consequences would take hold in a HUGH and SERIES way.
Excellent, now the poor will have to pay taxes ...