Actually, I believe the solution is in front of the Supreme Court at this very moment. Should the USSC follow the Constitution and declare that Government CANNOT FORCE any citizen to purchase a “product or service”, they will be in effect declaring ALL LAWS that cannot be read and Understood by the average person of average means without the assistance of a “Government approved and licensed attorney or accountant” shall be immediately NULL and VOID. The government should not be allowed to force everyone to HIRE an ATTORNEY or an ACCOUNTANT just to understand and follow a LAW they ARE REQUIRED TO OBEY. Which is incidentally why we passed the Original 13th Amendment.
A return to apportionment by state will, of necessity, create an incentive in Congress to not pass tax measures!
The FairTax (and other sales taxes) is seductively simple.
The problem I have with it is it injects the federal government into EVERY purchase made. In our age of instant data mining, the possibilities of manipulation are staggering. The FairTax theory is: you swipe a debit card to buy a Coke, you pay a 20% (or whatever) sales tax. The ugly likelihood (once Congress gets busy on the tax code): you swipe a debit card, you scan the Coke, the transaction _starts_ with a 20% sales tax, but then because you used “plastic” knows who you are, notices from your tax history you’re in a higher tax bracket, ups that to 30%, notices you’re buying an “plus unhealthful” product, ups tax to 35%, checks your Obamacare (it’s not repealed yet, guys!) records and sees you’re borderline diabetic, ups tax to 45%, cross-references with criminal databases, notices an unpaid parking ticket, alerts security, and just as you’re opening the can walking out the door a cop arrests you for missing the court date you received in the mail but your toddler fed to the dog before you got home.
Do you _really_ want to give the feds that much monitoring capability?
Before you say “can’t happen”, remember that the IRS is leveraging border security to prevent tax-owing citizens from leaving. Fences block transit both ways, and point-of-sale taxation can be mined for a lot more information and abuse than you can imagine.
that proposal replaces the irs with NuIRS which is even MORE intrusive and more bloated. In addition it creates a NEW entitlement check that can only lead to MORE lobbying as k-street clients demand their product be included in the “prebate”.
THEN you SHALL have al sharpton et al demanding a “living prebate”.
The truth can be found in the nightmarish language of the proposal itself. EVERYONE must register. The federal government will determine what is or is not a family. The federal government requires the merchant to PROVE they are not an end user. and so on.