[geeks] Taxes

[Michael Parson]

On May 23, 2008, at 10:00 AM, Brooke Gravitt wrote:

> On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 10:47 AM, hike <mh1272 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Many have proposed a national sales tax in the USA.  (Is the "fair  
>> tax"
>> movement this concept?)
>
> Possibly - being that I live in the state & city of both of the
> largest proponents of the Fair Tax ( and the authors of a couple of
> the Fair Tax books ) - John Linder and Neal Boortz, I am probably more
> familiar with it that most. There is a lot of misinformation being
> circulated about the Fair Tax. In a nutshell, it would eliminate the
> IRS and introduce a 23% flat tax.

A flat sales tax on the sale of new goods (and services) sold to end  
consumers.  More correctly, 23% of the price of an item would be the  
sales tax.  It eliminates/replaces ALL payroll taxes.

> There would be no more embedded
> taxes on goods and pre-bates would be issued to every American to
> reimburse the taxes on good deemed "essentials" - groceries, for
> example.

And the pre-bate is based on the number of people living in your  
household, nothing about how much you make, every 5 person household  
would get the same pre-bate.

> It's the best idea by far today, and they've spent roughly $35 million
> in research in drafting it with help from top economists. It's a good
> plan. It's House bill HR25 , Senate  S1025. Call your
> representatives!!

This is the only tax proposal out there written by economists, not  
politicians.  It removes the power of taxation from the government and  
gives power back to the citizens, which is why the Congress doesn't  
like it.

There are two books to read about it.  The first one is _The FairTax  
Book_ by Neal Boortz and John Linder, and _FairTax: The Truth:  
Answering the Critics_, also by NB and JL.

And of course, their website:

http://www.fairtax.org/

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org