Repeal Article XVI of the Constitution and implement the Fair Tax.

Repeal Article XVI of the Constitution and implement the Fair Tax.

The FairTax proposal is a comprehensive plan to replace federal income
and payroll taxes, including personal, gift, estate, capital gains,
alternative minimum, Social Security/Medicare, self-employment,
and corporate taxes.  The FairTax proposal integrates such features
as a progressive national retail sales tax, dollar-for-dollar revenue
replacement, and a rebate to ensure that no American pays such
federal taxes up to the poverty level.  Included in the FairTax plan
is the repeal of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.  The FairTax
allows Americans to keep 100 percent of their paychecks (minus any
state income taxes), ends corporate taxes and compliance costs
hidden in the retail cost of goods and services, and fully funds the
federal government while fulfilling the promise of Social Security
and Medicare.

An integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a rebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar revenue neutrality, and the repeal of the 16th Amendment.

The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend, not on what we earn. It does not raise any more or less revenue; it is designed to be revenue neutral. So it is also
cost neutral – the final cost for goods and services changes little
under the FairTax. The FairTax is a fair, efficient, transparent,
and intelligent solution to the frustration and inequity of our
current tax system.

The FairTax eliminates the intrusive, inefficient IRS; The FairTax abolishes individual income-tax forms; The FairTax imposes no tax on small businesses or farms,The FairTax untaxes education;  The FairTax replaces all federal income and payroll taxes with a revenue neutral, 23% national sales tax.
5. The FairTax is fair because it:
  a. Has No exceptions, No exclusions = No loopholes
  b. Enables workers and retirees to keep 100% of their paychecks
  c. Encourages greater savings, investment, job creation, productivity, and economic growth
  d. Increases taxpayer compliance while reducing compliance costs

The FairTax removes the cost of corporate taxes and compliance costs from the cost
of U.S. exports, putting U.S. exports on a level playing field with
foreign competitors. Lower prices sharply increase demand for
U.S. exports, thereby increasing job creation in U.S. manufacturing
sectors.

• Abolishes the IRS
• Closes all loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
• Ensures Social Security and Medicare funding
• Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
• Allows American products to compete fairly
• Reimburses the tax on purchases of basic necessities
• Enables retirees to keep their entire pension
• Enables workers to keep their entire paycheck
  

  The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue replacement, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment. This nonpartisan legislation (HR 25/S 1025) abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax -- administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities. The IRS is disbanded and defunded. The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. The FairTax is a fair, efficient, transparent, and intelligent solution to the frustration and inequity of our current tax system.
  
  No tax on used goods.  The amount you pay to fund the government is totally visible.    
  With the FairTax you are only taxed once on any good or service. If you choose to buy used goods − used car, used home, used appliances − you do not pay the FairTax.  If, as a business owner or farmer, you buy something for strictly business purposes (not for personal consumption), you pay no consumption tax.  The FairTax is charged just as state sales taxes are today.  When you decide what to buy and how much to spend, you see exactly how much you are contributing to the government with each purchase. 

  Retail prices no longer hide corporate taxes or their compliance costs, which drive up costs for those who can least afford to pay.   
  Did you know that income taxes and the cost of complying with them currently make up 20 percent or more of all retail prices?  It’s true.  According to Dr. Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University, hidden income taxes are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for everything you buy.  If competition does not allow prices to rise, corporations lower labor costs, again hurting those who can least afford to lose their jobs.  Finally, if prices are as high as competition allows and labor costs are as low as practical, profits/dividends to shareholders are driven down, thereby hurting retirement savings for moms-and-pops and pension funds invested in Corporate America.  With the FairTax, the sham of corporate taxation ends, competition drives prices down, more people in America have jobs, and retirement/pension funds see improved performance.

  The income tax exports our jobs, rather than our products.  The FairTax brings jobs home.
  Most importantly, the FairTax does not burden U.S. exports the way the current income tax system does.  The FairTax removes the cost of corporate taxes and compliance costs from the cost of U.S. exports, putting U.S. exports on a level playing field with foreign competitors.  Lower prices sharply increase demand for U.S. exports, thereby increasing job creation in U.S. manufacturing sectors.  At home, imports are subject to the same FairTax rate as domestically produced goods.  Not only does the FairTax put U.S. products sold here on the same tax footing as foreign imports, but the dramatic lowering of compliance costs in comparison to other countries’ value-added taxes also gives U.S. products a definitive pricing advantage which foreign tax systems cannot match.

Comments

[Ian]

Naysayers railing against the FairTax become, ipso facto, defenders of the an INCOME TAX system. Prof. Larry Kotlikoff believes that the current tax system IS bringing the country to nothing less than an "economic meltdown (*)" by virtue of the invisibility of actual taxes paid. If Americans do not understand the true cost of their government, they're unlikely to hold Congress accountable - thus the enabling mechanism to continued profligate spending.

Even with the foregoing notwithstanding, do FairTax naysayers really believe:

• Workers love having their pay confiscated, hourly, through gov't withholding and don't mind getting their money back by involuntary servitude - to the tune of 50 hours/year (on average) - preparing an annual tax return?

• That certifying the number of persons in your family (annually, and, ancillarily, upon change in household) is an abrogation of our freedom - more intrusive and complex than filing a tax return every year subject to threats and intimidation by theIRS.

• It's better to have theIRS fishing through citizens' income transactions (complete with audits, interest, penalties, and threats against individuals, families, businesses as well as confiscation of their homes, property, and bank accounts) rather than - Gawd forbid - issuing a gov't check to an individual (while pretending that Social Security payments disbursement logistics really can't work for "prebates")?

• That an monthly advance tax rebate is the same thing as "being on the dole" ? (Only lobbyists, special interests, and business deserve "handouts" ? - the politician gets a payoff from a lobbyist, the lobbyist gets a payoff from its client, and the citizen gets higher taxes and/or prices that pay for it all.)

• "Hidden taxes" in higher prices are fine because they're not "taxes," per se? (Hey, forget that families are really paying business's costs for complying with a business income tax code - staff, consultants, submittals, etc.)

• It's far better to have a gargantuan tax collection "service" in Washington, than to have 50 decentralized, smaller, leaner state collection agencies collecting taxes from fewer sources?

• That the work by notable economists (paid tens of millions of $'s by Americans for Fair Taxation) doesn't carry weight because it was paid for by private funds instead of some gov't / quasi-gov't enterprise?

• That FairTax's backing by many economists (**) doesn't carry any weight because (the Brookings') Wm Gale's testimony before the President's Commission on Tax Reform is - somehow - above all that?!

(NOTE: The Commission/Gale made up their own "consumption tax" requirements, as if that constituted a legitimate rebuke of the FairTax plan. Dr. Kotlikoff has requested - but never received - Gale's technical "modus operandi" which would definitively explain just how Gale's conclusions can be reconciled with Kotlikoff's well-documented technical work (***).

(*) http://snipurl.com/meltdowninprogress (If what Prof. Kotlikoff is saying is true, timely replacement of the income tax with the FairTax consumption tax MUST HAPPEN SOON.)

(**) http://snipurl.com/econsopenletter (Lists every tax that FairTax will eliminate, together with the power they represent to pol's and lobbyists.)

(***) http://snipurl.com/taxpanelrebutted (No fair equating the Tax Panel's idea of a consumption tax with the FairTax plan.)

America's working families are paid because the companies they work for sell goods and services. Let's pay for government the way America's families are paid - when something is sold. Let us work, together, to end the enslavement of the Tax Code and to restore Liberty to America's working families: http://snipr.com/scrapthecode