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Ms. Mejia’s comment regarding the FairTax, in her opening paragraph, quickly implied that her article was not going to be “fair” to her readers, or to the FairTax. The 2nd sentence immediately tells those who have read the FairTax story she has little knowledge about how the FairTax bill acquired its name. She also made the accusations that the FairTax was fraught with favoritisms, self-interests, bias and deception. Ms. Mejia then wrote her four myths trying to justify parts of her statement. Much of her myth’s have to be presumptive because they are flawed and your readers deserve to know the facts.

First let’s deal with her calling the FairTax, the “so-called” FairTax, as many other critics have in the past. The FairTax was “called-so,” or named, by ordinary everyday taxpayers who were involved in the $22 million commissioned studies made while designing and test marketing of The Fair Tax Act. In other words, Ms. Mejia has immediately alienated these participants and over 800,000 taxpaying supporters of the FairTax from around our great nation, by using her adjective of poor taste.

Ms. Mejia goes on to say, “…Americans would pay a national sales tax on every purchase they make.” This is another misleading statement on Ms. Mejia’s part. Only new goods and services are taxed; used goods such as used cars, previously lived in homes, used clothes, home appliances, gardening tools, etc. will not be taxed under the FairTax. Many low income people will benefit immensely from this feature.

Ms. Mejia’s 2nd myth is exactly that, a figment of her imagination. She states,” The second myth that needs to be addressed is that the IRS could be abolished because the federal government would no longer collect income and payroll taxes. That might technically be true but a new massive bureaucracy would have to be created in its place. This new agency would be in charge of sending every single American an approximately $450 check at the beginning of every month that presumably reimburses them for taxes they pay on their income up to the federal poverty level.” Had Ms. Mejia gone to www.fairtax.org, spent a few minutes reading the FAQ she possibly could have avoided this erroneous statement.

The massive bureaucracy is already in place in 45 of our 50 states. Forty-five states already are using a state sales tax and each state has their own collection system. Each state will have a choice of collecting the FairTax using their current sales tax system and the cooperation of their service companies and retailers. The states and their individual services and retailers will each be paid .25% of the total FairTax each collects; the retailer sends the collected FairTax (less their .25% reimbursement) to their state agency, who in turn forwards the total of the state’s collections to the US Treasury, after deducting .25% for their service.

Our current Social Security program is doing a great job of sending out Social Security checks and they will only need to enlarge their system to issue the “prebate” checks. Only one check will be issued for each registered legal household.

Where Ms. Mejia came up with the $450 checks she says would be sent to every American is beyond us FairTax supporters. Had the FairTax been in effect during 2007, the amount paid to every adult citizen in a household would have been $196 (rounded), not $450; a single parent with one child was $262 (or $66 per child in a household). A check for $458 would be for a family of two adults and one child. Readers can go to question #3 of the 50 most frequently asked questions to read about the “prebate,” or www.fairtax.org, and educate themselves on the virtues of the FairTax.