I've begun looking at candidates for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina to replace the Obamabot Kay Hagan. We have a crowd stepping up for that seat, 5 running so far. They all seem like nice folks. One woman and four men. One is a doctor and one is a medical nurse practitioner. One a broadcaster personality. Two libertarians. One is the current Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives. One a pastor, representing the Christian conservative side of things. There is rumored subterfuge, some of which has credibility with Karl Rove backing one or two of them. Rove's rumored scheme is to back one of them as a spoiler to knock out the most likely Tea Party contender. Party politics is becoming uglier. I'm sure it always was and I am just seeing more of it.
So as I've been looking at these candidates I am finding one or two of them are promoting the Fair Tax. Red flags for me, if you have read my former posts about that. All of the candidates are saying they would make the effort to get rid of Obamacare. Green lights all around on that one. But what is a person thinking... that they know Obamacare is bad, but they want to say the Fair Tax is good? Am I crazy or are these folks disconnected from reality?
Both Obamacare and the Fair Tax are leviathan programs of taxation. Both programs grab a huge amount of the economy for control by the Federal government. Oh...yeah..those Fair Tax guys say it doesn't control anything, but just taxes new goods and all services. They say you would be in control by deciding to purchase or not. Uh huh. Obamacare taxes medical devices and insurance policies. Obamacare takes over 1/6th of the economy. The Fair Tax would take over most of the economy, all but the 'used goods' part. You don't have to pay the taxes unless you want to get your hair cut or buy a new house or car, or new clothes or dishes, or pay someone to wash your car, or buy Christmas gifts for your family. But that's o.k. You don't have to pay Obamacare taxes unless you buy an insurance policy, or want a knee replacement or a pump for your diabetes medications. No problem. What?
Both Obamacare and the Fair Tax require a new IRS scheme of collections. Both require a new technological solution of reporting your activities to the Federal government. Both are expensive, comprehensive, unwieldy, and use an untrustworthy government bureaucracy to implement all of the processes.
I'm going to say the obvious once again about the Fair Tax. The Revolution that created this nation was begun by fighting off consumption taxes by a controlling government. What has happened since then? Today we have people promoting themselves as patriots who are promoting consumption taxes. What is the difference between Obamacare which taxes your health insurance and the Fair Tax which taxes your purchases of goods and services? Again, both using the Federal government to decide what will be taxed and using technology to track your purchases? At least if the tax is based on your income, the minutiae of your daily life is not tracked by the IRS. Granting that tracking everything by the Federal government is now becoming the norm, there is another disconnect; some of the same people who like the Fair Tax also say they are against Smart Meters and Black Boxes which track every kw hour you use and every mile you drive. This gives me whiplash!
Surely we can do better than this. Libertarians, such as the Reason Foundation, are lately promoting 'public private partnerships' for roads using tolls, too. They pretend this is a "free market" solution, when it is nothing but a taxpayer guaranteed profit scheme for some corporate entities who manage infrastructure projects. The Fair Tax is nothing more than a different name for the VAT (value added tax) used in the EU. And as long as you are using VAT type taxation, then just pile on carbon taxes while you are at it. As far as I can see, the Fair Tax is a VAT tax and is all too similar to Obamacare taxes. Instead of, or in addition to, taxing your healthcare, the Fair Tax taxes everything else. I just can't get excited about a candidate who wants to promote that for America. I want the Federal government taken down to its proper size...the one where DC is only in charge of national security and foreign relations. All of this domestic manipulation of citizens' personal lives needs to bite the dust as all other socialist tyrannies eventually do. Let's get rid of it now while we still can.
I'd say I'm confused, but I don't think I am. Something doesn't compute with this kind of thinking. And I'm definitely NOT happy about candidates promoting themselves as conservative constitutionalists, but are then promoting programs that are anything but constitutional solutions to shrinking the out of control Federal bureaucracy.
I was fooled by Fairtax -- sounds great. We need a new tax code. But Fairtax is a clever sounding hustle, I fell for it too. Now I offer 50K to prove there is no research as they claim.
ReplyDeleteSpecifically, they claim 22 million dollars of research, about a "very very simple" personal consumption tax, to replace essentially all other fed taxes.
. Who would lie about that? You can just talk to the researchers, right? See the research.
Who would lie? You tell me. . I offer 50K if anyone -- including Ms Pass -- if they can show one page, just one page, of that research. SHould be easy right? Y ou have 22 million dollars of research, you can show 1 page right?
The offer is this: I will give 50,000 dollars cash to anyone who can show 1 page of the 22 million dollars of research about their simple personal retail consumption tax to replace all other fed taxes. You don't have to show Fairtax would work, just that factually, Fairtax has 22 million dollars of research into this personal retail consumption tax of 23% that would replace all other fed taxes.
The trick is, Fairtax not only has no research. They have a public relations firm posing as research -- but more, the documents issued by the public relations firm show massive impossible other taxes, as you will see. Plus, those documents actually disprove the hustle -- Fairtax has massive tax increases at state city and local level, written into their "assumptions". Therefore, the retail sales tax does not replace all other taxes, because they "assume" massive increases in city county and state taxes!
In the slick fine print by their public relations partners (Beacon Hill) there are massive OTHER taxes on top of, in addition to, and paid separately from the retail personal tax. Yes, there is a personal retail sales tax-- for a SMALL PART of Fairtax. The largest taxes in Fairtax are in the clever fine print -- the massive advance taxes on city county and states for capital investments, and wages and pension expenditures.
We do need a new tax code, we do NOT need folks fooling people with hustles. I put up 50K -- you can be sure the hustler won't offer 50K if anyone can prove their deal is BS, because I'd have them in court. Whoever did this, though, was and is wealthy, it's not cheap to hire Boortz, its not cheap to have jets and tour buses and publish the books and have all kinds of web sites created and paid for.
New York City, for example, would owe over 500 million dollars, just in wage, pension and operational expenditure taxes!
Furthermore the clever language in Beacon Hill documents say, admit, they "assume" all city county and states will "take necessary steps to raise their tax rates" to pay these!
SO there are massive -- truly massive -- other taxes that their OWN fine print says will need all city county and state taxes to go up -- way way way up. Sounds great, cause all hustles sound great. We need a new tax code -- watch out for hustlers with fine print tricks
The “Fair Tax” is a Fraud – we need a 10% “Tithe”!
ReplyDeleteI am a retired tax lawyer (JD, LLM in Taxation)/CPA, with no financial stake in ANY tax system. For supporting details for all of my comments, call Stephen C. Eldridge tel. 423-532-7337.
The so-called “Fair Tax” (“FT”) is a fraud – it is MORE WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION, AND a financial SCAM.
In their own words, FT proudly advertises that it is MORE PROGRESSIVE (INCREASES WELFARE). The Prebate is advertised as merely repaying the poor for any FT they pay, but actually would pay them far more than any FT they might pay and also gives the working poor free SS/Medi. The Prebate is NOT a refund of FT paid, it is a new $600B ENTITLEMENT, leaving many Americans receiving a monthly check from the federal govt – a very bad idea for those of us who are not Socialists. More poor people will be receiving free SS/Medi.
The FT hits us with a 40-70% in-your-face retail sales tax that would spark a taxpayer rebellion that would destroy our 70% retail-sales-sensitive economy. 40% = 30% FT + e.g., 10% State sale sales tax and 70% is the rate needed at a sample 30% FT evasion rate (the FT incredibly assumes ZERO evasion and ZERO intentional reduction in spending and ZERO migration from new to used goods).
IN ADDITION to that 40-70% tax, the FT contains several HIDDEN TAXES. 1) FT’s 30% rate is really 42+%; the 12+% is hidden by having fed + S/L govts paying FT – they must get that money from you. 2) The initial 30% rate is 1-5% short and that plus any other revenue shortfall will have to be made up by raising more FT (or a NEW Income Tax), 3) The fed budget will rise for a) SS benefits because the FT-guaranteed SS COLA of almost 30%, b) fraudulent new SS benefits, c) COLA’s payable to all federal retirees – and more FT (or a NEW Income Tax) we be required to fund these.
The NEW IRS (i.e., the STAA) may well be far worse, far more invasive than today’s IRS b(the buyer is liable to pay FT and get/show a receipt) – we may well have to file an “Annual FT Summary”.
We may well wind up with BOTH a NEW Income Tax AND the FT.
Seniors will start to pay for SS/Medi again and will pay a 2nd-3rd tax on their earnings. Middle class seniors will pay more tax under FT and will lose purchasing power because of the 15-30% price increase.
What we need is a Flat Income Tax with No Deductions, No Exemptions, No Credits and a 10% rate, with business income taxed to shareholders on a very simple basis (i.e., no corporate income tax) – See H.R. 1040, but with changes as noted here. Call your representatives in Congress and let them know that this is what you want.
Thank you both so very much for your input here. I needed that! I posted this on facebook and was slapped back quickly by one of the supporters of the Fair Tax...so your support and extra information really means a lot to me! I don't know why those who have grabbed onto this scheme can't see it for what it is...but we'll keep trying to open eyes! Thanks!!!
ReplyDeleteGood luck on finding a good Senate candidate, Cheryl. We could use some more Ted Cruz types in Washington.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think the Founders errored in abandonig the Articles of Confederation. If they could have fixed the AoC, then the majority of the power would definitely remained with the states. Each state would have decided how they pick their Congressmen and Senators, Once Congress and the President agreed on a budget the cost would have been prorated to each state (based on population, I presume) and each state would have to decide how to tax their citizens. Then people could vote with their feet if they didn't like the way their state handled taxes. But, that didn't happen and I do not see how this Leviathan can ever be undone by our current political system. I hope I'm wrong.
Very good, Jim! You have the right idea exactly. I like it! At this point though, they can't even stick within the revenues they are taking in...as Bunker just said, the government took in a record amount of tax revenue. But still they spend over that by a trillion dollars every year now? Holy smokes!
DeleteYou guys ought to see the daggers that have been thrown at me over the Fair Tax. I honestly wonder what the brainwashing is that causes some people to go so crazy. You dare not criticize it or you will be ripped to smithereens, called stupid, called every other name in the book! I find that very strange. Disturbing at least.
I hope you are doing well and O.K. Still reading stories here about V and wild things going on there. Take care!!
Great post and comments. For starters we could get rid of the tens of thousands of pages of the tax code and see where we are. I just read that the government took in a record amount of tax revenue. We have a spending problem That is the start of the solution. As an aside, Whatever it takes we must stop the massive amounts of school tax via real estate taxes that are forcing people out of their homes.
ReplyDeleteYes, Bunker...all of the above! Not to mention the insidious Federal spending on Common Core, too. I'm all for starving the beast. There has to be a way. And forcing them somehow to stop spending money they don't have in the first place....geez!
DeleteJust one quick follow up note here. There were a few other comments that I refuse to publish because they are so disrespectful and derogatory that I will not give those comments room on my blog to say such things.
ReplyDeleteI've argued against the Fair Tax before and also in this post, and each time the responses from Fair Tax proponents have been full of mockery, venom, and hate. I wish each of them would take a breath and stop to think for a minute about what on earth would turn them into such Alinskyite disciples. There is something seriously wrong there.
Most of them assert that I am too stupid or ignorant to grasp the math involved and / or that I should spend time with them so they can convince me. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck, have had a real estate license and owned a wholesale business in my career life, raised intelligent successful children and am smart enough to see a scam when it is shown to me. There is principle behind this math and they can throw numbers around and theorize about the results of it to try to support the Fair Tax, but that doesn't mean the principle of it is either constitutionally supported or viable in practicality.
I don't like being attacked any more than the next guy, but I can take it if I stand on principle ...and if I learn I am wrong, I always admit it. But I don't think I am wrong about this. Further, the tactics of the Fair Tax proponents tell me I am not wrong.
So...if you are wondering what happened to your comments, wonder no more. I refused to publish them.
Cheryl,
ReplyDeleteGood for you.
I wish there were more people with common sense who can easily see that the Ft-merchants are selling snake-oil, when they offer only superficial FT propaganda, superficial arguments that do not go to the heart of what the FT really does, make grand economic claims that cannot be predicted and then go on to denigrate and insult their opposition.
I often find that it is THEY who do not understand the FT. In their ignorance which knows only FT talking points they rarely understand and real world depth about how the FT will really play out.