I am happy to see people asking questions about the fair tax aren't you?

Question

If this is to be debated meaningfully, people need to know what they are talking about. Read the wikipedia article on it people.

I think anytime before 2010 is unrealistic, but you never know. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Beyond "no taxes is fair"
or
"Oh great more tax breaks for corporate cronies"

The first three answers make me put my head in my hands. More slogans, more cliches..... can't you actually come up with an argument?

Answer 1

Debate is a good thing. Growing government is a bad thing. Taxes are intended to do just that, pay for government. I like the flat tax idea, and would love to see us get back on the gold standard and pay as we go. That would limit government and corporate welfare at the same time. Should that occur there would be no room in the budget for any pork or pet projects. You would lose the lobbyist and the citizens would get back their government.

Answer 2

The fair tax is essentially flawed. The idea to set a fixed national sales tax would never work. Some argue it doesn't necessarily favor the rich, but this is untrue. Most people from the upper/upper middle classes have much of their money in investments and banks while the poor spend most of their money that they earn. Thus, although the tax helps investments, it would create a small recession because the low-lower middle class will not buy as much, not to mention the impact on foreign trade.

Answer 3

The "fair tax" is a sales based tax that disproportionately taxes lower income people at a higher percentage of their income.

The only truly fair tax is a flat tax on income in which all people pay the same percentage of their income in taxes.

The only good point about the so called fair tax is that not even the illegals can get by without paying it.

Answer 4

To be short and to the point,"What's fair is fair.".
It is good to see debate about tax reform. maybe by the time Social security collapses we will see a fair tax with added taxes to supplement what government has been borrowing for pork for decades.
A fair tax would be strictly on usage of goods. Our whole system needs overhauling.

Answer 5

Personally from what I have read the fair tax sounds like a great idea. I still would like to see some information on how much the Fed would rake in but from what I can tell it is fair and distributes the tax burden equally based on what you buy. I think Dems don't like it because it would eliminate the "Rich people don't pay their fair share" stuff because they would end up paying more since they buy more and make more expensive purchases

Answer 6

See link - the topic is just not that simple.

""The point of progressive taxation is not to penalize those who succeed, but to protect those who have not.""

""Shifting from the current system to a strictly proportional one would mean higher taxes for all poor families and most of the middle class. The Armey and Forbes flat tax proposals retain two of the current system's basic progressive features – a separate business tax and an expanded income-tax exemption for initial income – and repeal four others. Gone under both plans would be the EITC for working poor people, estate taxes on the wealthy, reductions in the value of income tax deductions for the affluent and graduated tax rates for everyone.

In fact, fairness under these flat tax plans would be more nearly regressive than truly proportional, because they would shift part of the burden from capital to labor. Under both, capital would be taxed once – under the business tax – while wages and salaries would be taxed twice – under the income and payroll taxes. Since the top 10 percent of families derive 30 to 48 percent of their incomes from capital, as compared to 6 to 10 percent for everyone else, these plans necessarily mean higher taxes on middle-class people and lower taxes on the wealthy.

Under these flat tax schemes, for the first time in our history, the tax system would redistribute income towards higher-income people. Those at the top would claim a larger share of national income after paying their taxes than they did before paying them, and taxation would reinforce the income inequalities produced by free markets. And that would flunk any test of fairness yet proposed.""

Answer 7

Why is it that its usually Millionaires, such as Forbes who tout the "fairness" of it?

There is only one word to describe the fact that the federal government now spends almost $3 trillion a year: obscene. At least 90 percent of what the federal government spends is unconstitutional, wasteful, or against the limited-government principles of the Founders. The only thing the FairTax does is change the way the state confiscates the wealth of its citizens. As Congressman Ron Paul says: "The real issue is total spending by government, not tax reform."

Answer 8

Why do people think that rich people get all of the tax breaks. Does anyone realize that the top 1% of wealthiest people/businesses in the U.S. pay over 75% of the total tax revenue per year. That leaves all of the close to 300 million people in the U.S. making up less than 25% of the tax revenue stream. I, for one, want to see rich people paying less taxes, because they are the one's who own the industries that I work for and what pays my bills. If there is less tax burden on them then they are more likely to re-invest the money into the corporate environment and create more jobs (even higher paying jobs). WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!

Answer 9

I think people need to see the big picture...

Outsourcing of jobs in this country is becoming a huge economic problem for the working class. Big corporations are sending work to places like India and China where they can pay wages much cheaper than they are required to in the US. If the companies were allowed tax breaks, this would free up money to pay workers and build factories in the US.

I personally think it would be nice to include an extra tax incentive to companies that pledged to keep their operations here and hire US workers,.

Answer 10

The "Fair tax" is a misnomer as it isn't fair at all nor even economically prudent.
____
Yes, my argument is that our economy is based upon consumer spending, for the most part. Further, this is more like a "Flat tax" and thus, the poor would pay more than they currently do, which is unfair. It does nothing towards any other assets or incomes that the uber-wealthy enjoy.

Such groovy names (Fair Tax) are an attempt to cloud the true issue of a National Sales tax...

What would be approaching a more fair tax similar to what is being proposed would be a Transaction Tax on ALL monetary transactions (these can be weighed differently for "fairness). Transactions would include: pay, dividends, withdrawals, deposits etc... This would capture the totality of ones wealth and NOT disproportionately focus only on sales. The beauty of Transaction Taxes is that they would not require the time, paperwork, and humanpower of Income Tax filings, for then, the collections would be directed at the banks, stock firms and businesses, only.