Reach for a Lime

Abstract:
So It's no longer a small crowd that has been exposed to the FairTax idea. But I figured it couldn't hurt to post about it anyways. God willing, one day it will be recognized and taken into serious consideration.

Fair Tax

On August 15^th of last year something really weird happened. A book about taxes was pronounced a #1 New York Times Bestseller. The book was called The Fair Tax Book by Neal Boortz and John Linder. Here’s the cliff notes version of the book: it covered the history of the American tax system, how the practice of withholding came to pass, put a price tag on compliance, shined a spotlight on hidden costs, and finally is showed how H.R. 25 (The FairTax) would solve it all.

Quite simply, FairTax is a progressive national sales tax at 23%. Federal income tax and payroll based taxes would be abolished (Yay.). It would tax you only on what you spend and not on what you earn. Despite what some up on the hill say, it is a nonpartisan movement. I mean, party doesn’t really come into play when you start saying things about no IRS. Think about it. The repeal of the 16^th Amendment isn’t a small task and the bill does have its critics but still, the idea of take “home pay” just being-pay does seem to resonate. But how much does the average American really know about the dealing of the IRS? What are the Federal Tax Withholding Tabels?

Why is our tax code under such scrutiny? When you have 3,697,733 words to it (Title 26) it’s easy to understand. It also becomes obvious then, why so many of us have difficulty understanding the process and then attempting to file correctly every year.

The largest complaints against the plan is that the price of goods and services would increase, the tax isn’t indexed for inflation, it could open up “black markets” to avoid taxation, it doesn’t solve high taxation for government spending and that a blanket sales tax would be disastrous for our economic freedom. As I said there was quite a bit of criticism about the Fair Tax system and the nixing of the revered IRS. So Boortz and Linder fired back in 2008 with another book: FairTax: The Truth.

It is a huge movement with quite a large following. Google ”FairTax” or “fair tax“ and you will come up with 51,900,000 hits. A number of congressional committees have heard testimony on the proposed reform, the bill now has 21 co-sponsors in DC and a number of economists say it would pump life into our dying economy. There is even an organization dedicated to its implementation: Americans For Fair Taxation .

Our constitution says,

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

So they can tax us to death so long as we the people are willing to stand for it? So does it really make sense or is it just acceptance? Either way, I would advise you to do some research of your own and just hop off that fence.