It is time we ditch all of Title 26, the Internal Revenue Code and all its additional rulings in favor of FairTax (H.R. 25/S. 122--yes, it's a real bill in front of Congress). Under FairTax, we get the following advantages:
1. We can get rid of most of the 30,000-plus tax lobbyists--now HALF the lobbyists in Washington, DC--along with the corruption that goes along with it.
2. The tax code will only be just a few hundred pages, so anyone who can read a young adult novel can figure out the code.
3. Its very simplicity means extremely low compliance costs, around 5% of the current circa US$430 BILLION year cost of tax compliance. Imagine freeing up circa US$408 BILLION per year for more productive activities.
4. Millions of jobs, thousands of factories, and hundreds of corporate headquarters return to the USA, because it is tax-advantageous to do so. This means WAY lower unemployment rate and a new residential and commercial real estate boom, not to mention construction jobs as homes, factories and office complexes are refurbished and/or new ones built.
5. With no more incentive to offshore liquid assets for tax avoidance reasons, it means banks on American soil will be fully funded (with most of the estimated US$15 TRILLION in American-owned liquid sitting in offshore financial centers and foreign banks returning to the USA), providing huge stability to these banks and the banks will now have money to lend out for home loans, business loans and business lines of credit.
6. We no longer fear having one of the most unloved of Federal agencies require intimate details of our personal and business finances and the abuse of that agency for political reasons.
7. With no more taxation on savings, capital gains and stock dividend payments, American residents can now create their own private "nest eggs" for retirement and/or older age medical bills. This will TREMENDOUSLY reduce the financial pressure on both Social Security and Medicare.
8. The USA becomes the world's largest flag of convenience for commercial shipping. That could mean shipping ports along the Pacific coast, Atlantic coast, and Gulf of Mexico coast will boom as ships will be built and repaired there again on a large scale.
9. It would hugely attract foreign investment. Companies like Samsung, Foxconn, Siemens, and even Airbus would rush to the USA to establish US-based manufacturing and assembly plants.
So what are we waiting for?
Great arguments, Ray! And you ask a legitimate question.
The problems I have encountered, since I started my National Retail Sales Tax activism (1991), generally center around an unwillingness of politicians to give up the power that access to the Internal Revenue Code (and Service) provides them.
Witness what is happening now — clearly the LIEberals have used the IRS as a weapon against their Republican enemies. So they are reluctant to give that power up.
And, the Republicans are reluctant to give the power up, because they might wind up pulling the levers of power again someday, and THEY might need an IRS to intimidate someone.
We got a whole lotta convincin’ to do!
Capisce?
At every step in the process those that benefit from the status quo will work to destroy not just the change, but those that support the change. Do not discount the enemy. No plan survives wholly intact after first contact. They’ll be fighting for their financial lives and to the death. We’ll be fighting for an ‘improvement’ and just a maybe.