Tax Day - FairTax.org

Two points:

1. If you are older, you have already had all your income taxed. Hopefully, you saved something for retirement. Now the Fair Taxers want to take your savings too.

2. Income taxes were made possible with a Constitutional Amendment. If this Amendment is not repealed BEFORE passing a Fair Tax Act, I guarantee we will end up with BOTH a National Sales Tax AND and an Income Tax.

But I'm not worried. Congress uses the tax system to manipulate the economy and encourage/discourage behavior. The Fair Tax, cleanly applied, would rob them of that power. It has little chance.

Should a "Fair" Tax be passed, it will only be a matter of time before Congress starts tweaking it to ensure "rich" people pay a lot more. The tax on hamburger: 5%. The tax on steak: 50%. And there will be massive lobbying to secure a low "fair" tax for each industry group.

Fair Tax seems like a good idea, but it just isn't.

The differences are easy to understand IF one first understands and heeds the first natural axiom/law of economics: whatever you tax you get less of, and whatever you subsidize you get more of. This is a NATURAL law, and so does not depend on human opinion for its existence and power. It simply affects things, or “gravitates” (like gravity). Tax productivity, and you get less of it. Subsidize single unwed motherhood as but one example, and, as statistics have shown in the last few of decades, you WILL get more of it.
There are crucially important differences between the so-called “income” tax (IT) — an intellectual and political fraud because “the system”, by adamantly refusing to specifically define the word “income” or honestly discuss its macro-economic ramifications, deliberately obfuscates the reality-based economic line between benefiting from your own labor and benefiting from “the other guy’s” labor — and the so-called “Fair Tax” (FT).
The IT functions as a direct tax on production (labor), which means it inevitably and inexorably gravitates toward less production/labor, and an attendant diminishing work ethic. In contrast, the FT, basically an excise (consumption) tax, functions as a direct tax on retail sales, that is, on goods produced by “the other guy.”
With the IT, part of what you produce — necessarily an ever-increasing percentage as productivity at large inevitably declines — is stolen and given to whomever professional deceivers (aka “politicians”) can use it to buy votes from. Since your labor is being stolen against your will via fear and coercion (e.g. threats of dire “legal” consequences for noncompliance), overall societal productivity WILL decline amidst little-understood widespread “economic woes” (aka “market adjustments” in economese or Greenspan Speak). As history has unequivocally proven, the IT inevitably devolves into a financially cannibalistic pecking-order struggle by a myriad of special-interest groups all making false promises while desperately competing for the political power with which to steal money out of “the other guy’s” pocket and put it into their own.
With the FT, your purchase and consumption of things produced by “the other guy” is taxed at the point of retail sale, which exerts a beneficial gravity toward self-sufficiency: the more things you can produce by yourself, for your own consumption, the less you have to buy, so the less tax you have to pay. With the FT, there is one rate (not to be confused with the meaningless term “flat tax” as a step-child of the destructive IT), so the rich buy a lot and pay a lot of taxes, while the poor make do with what they can produce, buy little, and pay little taxes. Nothing could possibly be more fair or constructive. Self-sufficiency is “subsidized” by not taxing it. Also, the Fifth Amendment is honored because you don’t have to bear witness against yourself in your private financial affairs under a phony “tax exception” cooked up by some federal judges.
The IT, which unspokenly pretends that “profit” or “gain”, and “compensation for loss” are the same thing (“income”), most benefits those who make their money off the labor of other people, and, because of that fact, gravitates toward a corrupt, interdependent, collectivist society where the individual is helpless and dependent, and where the clever and “educated” live off the labor of others by making the laws, printing the money, extracting the “interest”, and collecting the taxes, while the ignorant and less clever are consigned to make their living by digging the ditches, milking the cows, and picking the fruit. Hence the irreconcilable conflict between centralization and decentralization, which reaches even into things like energy sources. Centralists prefer interdependency-oriented money-intensive nuclear and fossil energies. Decentralists prefer self-sufficiency-oriented solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. The tax codes reflect which side has more political power at any given point in time.
An IT society, while pretending to be, and expending much rhetoric rhapsodizing about being, an open and free society, by reality-based definition must inevitably be a closed society and operate through deception, fear, secrecy, self-incrimination, and the suppression of information and speech (in the interests of “national security”, of course).
The FT, in contrast, gravitates toward an honest entrepreneurial society, where the individual is self-sufficient and self-reliant, and benefits from his own labor instead of allowing himself to be victimized by collectivist groupthink.
The IT, or the FT, which type of society do you think best serves the happiness and prosperity of humankind as a whole?
For me, a dedicated decentralist and life-long learner, the answer is a no-brainer! It is my fervent hope, even prayer, that the Internet and computer savvy will, through the free flow of information and the networking of individuals, facilitate individual freedom and prosperity for all.
Hence this over-long post (sorry) and hence my attendance in Rick and Adam’s classes!

I'm with you, Rick. I think you did the right thing to tell your readers about this very important proposed tax change. Everyone should really read the book and get the facts. We are otherwise going to continue to be ripped off!

I think an income sales tax or whatever you want to call it would be y to go.

No matter how much or how little you make it would be equal.

Let’s face it, if you make $$$ it will be spent!

All would pay tax! Weather it was stolen borrowed or what ever.

Illegals would pay tax also!

Just implement it over a 10 year period, we don’t want all the HandR block employees to go out of work at the same time. Also this would let the IRS know how to adjust the rate since there would be no tax dodgers to speak of.