A Less Intrusive Way to Tax
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Replace Federal Income Tax with Consumption Tax
Current
Situation

 

Today's federal income tax was started in the year 1913 with the passage of the Constitution's sixteenth amendment.  For history, click here.  Today's middle class citizens resent the current tax system due to its lack of fairness - they feel the rich folks get all the tax breaks.  Today's wealthy citizens resent the current tax due to its complexity - filling out paperwork and the extensive record keeping requirement is a real drain of time and resources.

The current tax code's complexity is a result of countless politicians who purchase votes using tax breaks as currency.  This "quid-pro-quo" activity, that is "something in exchange for something", has resulted in needless complexity in our tax system.  As a reference, note the following:

"In 1995, members of the tax writing committees of the House and Senate comprised only 10 percent of Congress, but received about 25 percent of the Political Action Committee (PAC) money going to Congress."1

1Tax Reform, The Century Foundation, http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Basics/Tax/Simplicity.html, June 2002.
Proposed
Changes
bulletRepeal the sixteenth amendment, and draft the repealing amendment to require the phasing out, over a 5 year period, of the existing tax system simultaneously with the phasing in of a consumption tax
bulletAfter the 5 year phase out period, all IRS offices will be closed
bulletThe existing state sales tax collection system will be used to collect the additional consumption taxes
Expected
Benefits		 The fact that funding will initially land in the hands of state government personnel will greatly swing power from federal to state government

To see how the organization Fairtax addresses such questions as "How does it affect the poor?", visit their Frequently Asked Questions page.