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TAXES 4/20/2013 6:48:21 AM
No matter what your political frame of mind, if you are an American you either lately (or for many years) have had to contend with the IRS. And no matter under whose administration you claim you were better off, you have always had to submit on bent knee to the whims, wiles, and wishes of the Internal Revenue Service.
How often have you thought: there must be a better way!
What if (the magical American phrase) you were allowed to keep every dime you earned and had 100% of your money to save or spend as you saw fit? What if there was a way you could pay your fair share to keep the country solvent — and still have your money in your pocket or in the bank or working for you in sensible investments? What if you never had to worry about the availability of Social Security or needed health care?
Consummations devoutly to be wished!
For years, I have spent hours (and average of more than 56 annually) laboring over income tax returns for myself and select members of my immediate family. Some are mindless (the forms, not necessarily select members of my family, but then again . . .?) while others are complex and endlessly time-consuming. And there is always the possibility that a careless digit, like an innocent nut dropped unintentionally into the fan of a jet engine, can send the whole mechanism into an irrecoverable tailspin!
For example, on my mother-in-law’s return one year I accidentally transposed her social security number. This easily correctable faux pas threw the IRS into a tizzy, and her refund was needlessly held up for several weeks while they (and we) initiated a full-scale investigation. Right, it was entirely my fault, as they explained in detail in over 500 letters ($225) — but the point is, it was all so unnecessary.
The Fair Tax Plan as laid out by former representative John Linder and associates could be the answer to all our woes. His first book, which is more than adequate, runs 132 pages, as opposed to the 50,000+ pages of the current U.S. Tax Code. And much, much easier to read!
Have you read his two books on the subject, co-authored by the retired radio iconoclast, Neal Boortz? If not, shame on you.
Here is what you would get if the IRS were dissolved and the Fair Tax Plan instituted:
1. No more withholding your money from your earnings.
2. No more income tax forms to fill out and submit.
3. No more direct taxes of any kind imposed by the federal government.
Here is what Uncle Sam would get:
1. More money in its treasury than ever received from income tax.
2. More jobs than it could fill for displaced IRS workers, former tax preparers, CPAs, accountants, and tax attorneys.
3. More money for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and general health insurance premiums.
4. More of everything it gets now through an antiquated, mandated income tax.
How?
1. A simple 23% sales tax on everything you purchase.
Hold on! I can hear you now: a 23% increase in the price of everything I buy?! You kidding? You nuts? My grocery bill now is $612.43 a month — you want me to spend $753.29? My car cost me $27,864. Your idea would raise it to $34,272.72! Get lost, fella!
You sound just like a Washington bureaucrat, and of course, like most of them, you are completely dead wrong. Yours is the typical knee-jerk reaction of everybody who has no concept how the Fair Tax Plan will work and benefit everyone.
Is it complicated? Only to politicos who cannot see the forest for the high grass! (I defy you to explain our current tax laws short of getting high on grass.) For simpler minds, read all the details of collection, distribution, and administration in Linder’s two books.
Who would be against it? Mainly the power-grubbing politicians, of course, because without the IRS, some federal and certain state elected representatives would be emasculated of power and out of control. And in many cases, out of office — as they should be, anyway.
No, the Fair Tax is not perfect, but if it is a 9.9 (on the Richer Scale) the Internal Revenue Code is -7.4; it may be our last hope as citizens of a country that is being suffocated by a congressional juggernaut run amuck.
The current economic system of mindless taxation is the poisonous fuel sustaining the juggernaut known as the Internal Revenue Code — and the Fair Tax Plan is the antidote.
If you cannot afford copies of the aforementioned books after April 15 (and most cannot), borrow them from your public library, while you still have one.
