The prebates are a big problem since the government can’t issue SS checks to only a portion of the taxpayers without making approximately 9 million errors annually. How many errors and at what cost will it be to issue monthly prebate checks to all taxpayers? This is a cost that we do not need, even if we choose to go to a consumption tax of some kind to replace the IRS.
It doesn’t make sense to tax people only to give most of that money right back. Just don’t take it in the first place!
Why does the fair tax have a prebate? Because nobody wants to tax the poor! Well, the original sales/excise system used to tax the poor. Government was also a lot smaller and less complicated back then. They didn’t have to spend billions on nuclear defense.
You can’t make an appeal to history without accepting all of its premises.