The FairTax Book
Posted by Mark Radulich on 12.12.2005
No matter how many ways you slice it, we the people have to pay our taxes.
The FairTax Book by Mark Radulich
Taxes are a necessary evil. We need them for public works projects, to pay government employees, to build interstate roads, to fund our schools and public utilities, and to fund our social agenda. No matter how many ways you slice it, we the people have to pay our taxes.
Though plenty of time and money have been spent on trying to avoid paying taxes, in the end, somewhere someway, the government gets its pound of flesh. For the most part, people don't kvetch too much about taxes themselves, what they do have pointed concerns with are the way in which taxes are collected.
Have you ever had this conversation?
Person A: Hey, how much did you make this week from your job?
Person B: How much did I make, or how much did I take home?
You see, right there is the problem. As a law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working society we seem to have contracted battered-wife syndrome when it comes to taxes. In what other series of circumstances would anyone put up with essentially being mugged on a weekly (or bi-weekly) basis? When it comes to income tax we shrug and just hand over our money amidst a wave of resignation.
We should be angry about this (and many of us are), but what action can we take to change our regressive tax system?
Alas, there is salvation in the form of syndicated talk show host Neil Boortz's and Congressman John Linder's co-authored work, "The FairTax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS (Not the mention the Social Security tax, the Medicare tax, corporate income taxes, the death tax, the self-employment tax, the alternative minimum tax, the gift tax, capital gains taxes, tax audits, and some major headaches every April 15.)"
Basically the FairTax would be a consumption tax at a rate of 23% in lieu of all the above-mentioned federal taxes. The worker/investor would receive all of his or her earned income in their paycheck without any funds removed for any taxes. Under this system, if you bank every paycheck and never spend a dime of it, then you'll never have to pay a federal tax. However, other than basic necessities such as food and clothing, most people do not manage to go through life not spending their hard-earned dough. As a result, all Americans would pay federal taxes through new consumer purchases that would carry a 23% sales tax, which would then be used to feed the federal coffers including Social Security and Medicare.
This is no airy-fairy, fly-by-night, half-baked, cockamamie idea thought up by a bunch of cloistered radicals in a basement. Congressman John Linder (R) of Georgia is the primary sponsor of the FairTax Act in the House of Representatives and is also a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. As of this writing, HR 25, as it is known in the House, is under consideration and has the support of 63 House members. There is also a FairTax bill under consideration in the Senate (S 1493), which has the committed support of Senators Saxby Chambliss, Richard Lugar, David Vitter, Tom Coburn, Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint. That's not exactly a landslide victory in the making, but it's a start and it is certainly further along than other proposals to reform our tax system.
With "The FairTax Book," Boortz and Linder are attempting to lobby the American people to their cause. At 182 pages long, one can finish it in one night (or a weekend if you are as busy as I am) and then, as the authors suggest, pass it along to a friend whom you think might be interested in the topic. The tenor of the work is sober and at times acerbic. You can plainly see, and at times they even simply tell you, which one of the co-authors contributed what to the narrative. Their collaboration is informative, easy to understand, maddening and, at times, even mildly funny. Now I know it's hard to imagine a book on a tax proposal as funny, but I found myself chuckling on a number of occasions.
The authors deal with the history of our tax code and its economic ramifications early on in the book. They explain rather vividly how we, the people who threw tea into the Boston Harbor because we felt that we were being taxed unfairly and without proper representation in the mother country, came to accept regressive taxation on our hard-earned income. You will see that it's quite the con job our politicians pulled on us and to this day we are suffering for it. The authors also painstakingly explain just what is withholding tax and why that "tax return" check we get every year is the biggest fraud since Daniel Drew filled his cows with water, thus giving us the phrase "watered down stock" at the turn of the 19th century. (Now if you got that, you were obviously not taught history in a public school.)
All in all, "The FairTax Book" is a great read and worth investing your time in. I've already talked it up to my father, some relatives, co-workers, and some of my more literate friends and they have definitely shown interest in seeing a consumption tax, such as theThe FairTax Act, passed before rampant inflation and bankruptcy ruins us all.
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