The GOP is just as guilty for not reforming our tax system even when afforded the opportunity with a majority in Congress, as in the 1990s. That was when Rep. John Linder presented the Fair Tax Act in Congress that most everyone ignored and didn’t push to a committee to iron out details to make it happen. It would be too much work for congressional members – it would require passing the FairTax Act and simultaneously repealing the 16th Amendment, so there wouldn’t be two tax systems in operation simultaneously. The golden bonus to the American people would be that IRS would become an insignificant auditing branch of the government and We the People would be rid of the powerful American Gestapo once and for all. I will discuss that further within this essay.
Sadly, tax reform is an uphill battle …
- Politicians don’t want tax reform since it reduces their power to micro-manage the economy and to exchange loopholes for campaign cash.
- The IRS doesn’t want tax reform since there are about 100,000 bureaucrats with comfy jobs overseeing the current system.
- Lobbyists obviously don’t want to reform since that would mean fewer clients paying big bucks to get special favors.
- And the interest groups oppose the flat tax because they want a tilted playing field in order to obtain unearned wealth.
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. [Government redistribution of wealth & income]
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. [Taxpayer funded abortion]
If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare … The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions. [The IRS can take away your property and take over your financial accounts before you appear before a court for judgment in a legal trial. Who gave them that authority? Certainly it is not entered into the Constitution of the United States.]
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.
There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, ‘till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People is sacredly obligatory upon all.
I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
It is not a Democrat or a Republican issue: It is an American issue.
- Receive money earned and decide how it will be spent.
- It is a consumption tax, based upon a flat rate, where you pay as much tax as you spend.
- No rhetoric about wealthy paying more – the more one makes the more one spends.
- No more tax evasion and “underground economy” – cost of levying tax for government is also reduced. With no deductions, everyone pays the same rate and because it is a percentage, the more one spends, the more one pays.
Benefits will not change. [except for cost-of-living increases] The FairTax actually puts these programs on a more solid funding foundation. Instead of being funded by taxes on workers’ wages, which is a small pool, they’ll be funded by taxes on overall consumption by all residents. … Employers continue to report wages for each employee, though, to the Social Security Administration for the determination of benefits. … Social Security/Medicare is no longer triple-taxed as under the current system: 1) when payroll taxes are initially withheld; 2) when those withheld payroll taxes are counted as part of the taxable base for income tax purposes; and 3) when the promised benefits are finally received.
Under the FairTax, all Americans consume what they see as their necessities of life free of tax. While permitting no exemptions, the FairTax (HR 25/S 13) provides a monthly, universal prebate to ensure that each family unit can consume tax-free at or beyond the poverty level, with the overall effect of making the FairTax progressive in application. This is not an entitlement, but a rebate (in advance) of taxes paid – thus the term prebate. Everyone pays taxes at the case register. [See Chart] … For example, a person spending at the poverty level ($30,260 for a family of four) has a 0% effective tax rate because of the annual prebate of $6,960 refunds all of the taxes they paid. Whereas someone spending at twice the poverty level has an effective tax rate of 11.5%, and so on. Annual spending would have to be in excess of $14 million per year to reach the statutory rate of 23%.
It has been established by the Tax Foundation group, which does not align itself to either plan, argues that …any problems with transition to the new system are worth the benefits each would produce.
And, as American Thinker posted – Free Obama and let him enjoy the rest of his life away from national responsibilities.
In 1913, those in favor of an income tax stated that no one should worry because the tax rate would never be above 10%. We all saw what happened with that: You give government a little amount of power that ends up giving government a lot of power. You give government a little bit of an entrée into your personal affairs; you’re giving government a blank check to know everything about you. It is not a good idea.
Federal Reserve is National Bank …
They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please…Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.
Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791 Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791