A flat tax does nothing. The progressive tax rates are simple arithmetic, a 4th 8th grader should be able to do the math [ed. for common core teaching].
All the effort in the tax computation is in determining what is and isn't taxable income. You don't get rid of this until you get rid of the income tax in all its forms.
And since the Fair Tax includes a income related prebate, you don't get rid of the IRS there either.
Even a pure sales tax doesn't get rid of the IRS, as somebody has to collect that Internal Revenue, but it at least cuts it back a bit.
Unfortunately, even without the 1040 income tax forms, we still have all sorts of government benefits with income based rewards and penalties: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and now ObamaCare. There's a lot of clean up to do.
No it doesn't. The fair tax is not calculated nor prebated on income. The nrst includes a prebate based on family size/amount required to spend on necessities. The writers wanted to exempt necessities from taxation and ameliorate the political problem of having people with little money to spend having to spend 23% of what they spend on taxes.
But I wish the poor WOULD have to pay. It's more likely that if they paid federal taxes that they'd not always vote to increase federal taxes.
But overall, I'd hope for no refunds of any kind - just lower the rate a bit.
But there is no connection at all to the prebate and income.
But a flat tax takes less math, has fewer loopholes, at least at first, and requires less to calculate, pay, and enforce. It doesn't issue checks to underachievers, and it doesn't bribe people into thinking what could be a very onerous sales tax/VAT type scheme is a better form of economic intercourse than they are currently being forced to perform, something (no matter what you call the agency) will require a small army to issue.
If you have to bamboozle people with a bribe, I'm not for it. And there is no way the agency will be any smaller than what we have now if it is sending payments to everyone on a monthly basis.
The IRS or taxing/prebating entity, whatever it is called, will not be eliminated, it will expand.
Either way, though we're discussing the wrong solution.
The problem is such that no matter how it is raised, the revenue will be insufficient as long as the government is spending money setting up illegal aliens instead of guarding our borders, as long as it pays generations of nonproductive but able people for their votes with funds garnered from and borrowed against the labors of the productive.
The real solution is to put the Federal Government back in its Constitutional Cage, reduce expenditures accordingly, and let the several States handle their individual functions as they will.
Sending another round of payments out for whatever reason is not a step in the right direction. The whole prebate thing reeks of a scam.