www.robviglione.com

• 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

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

• A “true patriot” doesn’t challenge the tax system with a workable alternative like the FairTax that fixes only some problems, they want it ALL fixed - now

• A “true patriot” doesn’t get up off his/her duff to actually do something to effect constructive change, they just sit around blogging and complaining about government spending - and critiquing workable alternatives (like the FairTax plan, for example)

• “Hidden taxes” in higher prices are fine, because they’re not “taxes” (hey, forget that families are really paying business’s costs for complying with a business income tax)

• 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)

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

I’m certainly glad that there are “true patriots” like you - out there blogging - to help bring real “change” to America (via the coffers of theIRS).

“Second, can anyone imagine the costs of cutting 350 million checks per month to everyone?”

That’s kind of funny because our current tax system includes the costs of sending 350 million people rediculous amounts of paperwork and the immense population of goverment workers required to interperet this paperwork. I don’t thing cutting the checks will be the problem.

The FairTax plan is a plan to replace federal income and payroll taxes. This includes personal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security/Medicare, self-employment, and corporate taxes.

First off, a huge national sales tax on EVERYTHING (there are no exceptions - food, services, yard sale items - all are subject to tax) is very, VERY, regressive. While I’m not a fan of “tax the rich, feed the poor”, sales taxes on necessary items like food hurt those least able to pay. Assume a family of four spends $100 a week on food. If that family makes $10,000 a year, they’re spending half on food, and 22% adds up to 11% of their annual income. Now, assume the same family makes $50,000 a year. Now, that same $100 a week plus 22% tax is only around 2% of their annual income.

Second, can anyone imagine the costs of cutting 350 million checks per month to everyone? Right there, that should be the deal breaker - those costs would include everything from the actual checks, the printing fees, envelopes, even postage fees (think the government will not include the government postal service in this scheme?).

Third, FairTax makes EVERYONE who sells anything a government tax collector. Because there are no exceptions, if you sell something, you must cover the tax. Sell some stuff on eBay? Collect the tax or become a criminal. You’re teenager mows lawns in the summer for some cash, or your 9-year-old runs a lemonade stand? No exceptions, remember. It even applies to Internet sales, which are right now not subject to sales taxes - how would you enforce this over national borders? Where’s the server located? Exactly how much business do you want to drive out of the United States in order to escape predatory taxation.

Lastly, this idea does NOTHING to address the real problem - the government is too big and collects too much in taxes. The book actually states that FairTax is just meant to get rid of the IRS and find another way to collect the same amount of money. But like I said earlier, you’ll need some agency to cut the checks, some agency to enforce the collection of the sales tax, and some agency to oversee everything. You’ll get rid of the IRS, and replace it with something else entirely, plus bolster the GAO and FBA, most likely, to handle accounting and enforcement duties.

FairTax is misguided at best, hostile and negligent at it’s worst, and represents the wrong solution to the wrong problem. We need to get rid of the IRS, but not by replacing income tax with another tax - we need to get rid of the income tax period.

The repeal of the 16th amendment was mentioned in the book. To sum up the authors, repealling it would require a significant amount of political capital. And not that it isn’t worth fighting for, however we should focus on eliminating the income tax first, inacting the FairTax and then work on the 16th ammendment.