Perhaps it’s populist rhetoric, but why should they bother?

I’m not excited about paying taxes either, but I think most of the taxes noise comes from those in the top 5% (modulo the super rich we talked about earlier).

One property of high tax regimes: as long as they don’t tax wealth but only income, they cement the very rich in place, while preventing the rise of strivers and new companies that compete with them. After all, if you’re already super rich, high cashflow taxes won’t threaten your lifestyle or your fortune, but if you’re building your own wealth with cashflow, high taxes crush you.

The people they hit are highly compensated professionals and small business owners, who make good incomes but don’t have the resources to get paid any way other than with salaries, self-employment, or other income, which is already taxed at marginal rates approaching 50% in many states, especially when you include SS/Medicare.

I cannot believe that there is a lack of support of the fair tax system. The current system is so freaking flawed, unfair, and BS it makes me want to puke…who else is baffled by all of these nonsense form, estimated payments etc…

What candidates support the fair tax? Lets make a AFM PUSH!!

Renown economist Laurence Kotlikoff believes that failure to enact the FairTax – choosing instead to try to “flatten” what he deems to be a non-flattenable income tax system – will eventuate into an irrevocable economic meltdown (4) because of the hidden aspects of the current system that make political accountability impossible. Tom Frey, of the DiVinci Institute, foresees the coming collapse of the income tax system (5).

Here is why the FairTax MUST replace the income tax. It’s:

• SIMPLE, easy to understand
• EFFICIENT, inexpensive to comply with and doesn’t cause less-than-optimal business decisions for tax minimization purposes
• FAIR, loophole free and everyone pays their share
• LOW TAX RATE, achieved by broad base with no exclusions
• PREDICTABLE, doesn’t change, so financial planning is possible
• UNINTRUSIVE, doesn’t intrude into our personal affairs or limit our liberty
• VISIBLE, not hidden from the public in tax-inflated prices or otherwise
• PRODUCTIVE, rewards, rather than penalizes, work and productivity

Its benefits are as follows:

For INDIVIDUALS:
• No more tax on income – make as much as you wish
• You receive your full paycheck – no more deductions
• You pay the tax when you buy “at retail” – not “used”
• No more double taxation (e.g. like on current Capital Gains)
• Reduction of “pre-FairTaxed” retail prices by 20%-30%
• Adding back 29.9% FairTax maintains current price levels
• FairTax would constitute 23% portion of new prices
• Every household receives a monthly check, or “pre-bate”
• “Prebate” is “advance payback” for taxes payable on monthly consumption to poverty level
• FairTax’s “prebate” ensures progressivity, poverty protection
• Finally, citizens are knowledgeable of what their tax IS
• Elimination of “parasitic” Income Tax industry
• NO MORE IRS. NO MORE FILING OF TAX RETURNS by individuals
• Those possessing illicit forms of income will ALSO pay the FairTax
• Households have more disposable income to purchase goods
• Savings is bolstered with reduction of interest rates

For BUSINESSES:
• Corporate income and payroll taxes revoked under FairTax
• Business compensated for collecting tax at “cash register”
• No more tax-related lawyers, lobbyists on company payrolls
• No more embedded (hidden) income/payroll taxes in prices
• Reduced costs. Competition – not tax policy – drives prices
• Off-shore “tax haven” headquarters can now return to U.S
• No more “favors” from politicians at expense of taxpayers
• Resources go to R&D and study of competition – not taxes
• Marketplace distortions eliminated for fair competition
• US exports increase their share of foreign markets

For the COUNTRY:
• 7% – 13% economic growth projected in the first year of the FairTax
• Jobs return to the U.S.
• Foreign corporations “set up shop” in the U.S.
• Tax system trends are corrected to “enlarge the pie”
• Larger economic “pie,” means thinner tax rate “slices”
• Initial 23% portion of price is pressured downward as “pie”
increases
• No more “closed door” tax deals by politicians and business
• FairTax sets new global standard. Other countries will follow

(1) http://snipurl.com/taxpanelrebutted (.pdf)
(2) http://snipurl.com/taxnotes_galerebut (.pdf)
(3) http://snipurl.com/econsopenletter (.pdf)
(4) http://snipurl.com/meltdowninprogress
(5) http://snipurl.com/incometaxcollapse

It’s well past time to scrap the tax code ( http://snipr.com/scrapthecode ) and pay for government the way that America’s working men and women are paid – when something is sold.

(Permission is granted to reproduce, in whole or part, provided snipurl.com links are preserved to measure message efficacy. – Ian)

Really? Where’s your evidence to support that? The progressive income tax has only guaranteed one thing — an ever expanding government.

The problem I have with this is the same problem I have with the income tax generally. There’s no incentive for the government to control spending and yet there’s no effective way for me to protest against this. I can’t exactly decide to strike and not earn an income. At least if they raise sales taxes too high, I can at least reduce my spending on non-essentials for a time to demonstrate my distaste. This is what is evil about an income tax. It’s wage slavery, pure and simple.

A sales tax need not be terribly regressive if it is structured properly. But notice what the definition of regressive is there. Not that the individual is faced with a higher tax burden than others, but that it makes up a larger percentage of their expenditures. Whereas the progresive income tax is truly unfair, because there are different rules that are applied to one person versus the next.

Finally, if you think that most lawyers and accountants don’t pay social security taxes because you read a single sentence claiming that to be so in a Bloomberg article, well, all I can say is don’t believe everything you read. The vast majority of lawyers and accountants are employees, not members of a partnership. And for those who are partners, yes they don’t pay social security taxes. Instead, they pay two forms of self-employment taxes that are used as the basis of calculating their social security contributions.