Huckabee Joins Chambliss To Stump For The Fair Tax
Huckabee Joins Chambliss To Stump For The Fair Tax
During his unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was a vocal supporter of the fair tax, a plan which would abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the federal income tax and most other federal taxes with a 30 percent sales tax.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Huckabee was in Georgia last weekend to support Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), another fair tax advocate, who is headed into a December 2nd run-off election with challenger Jim Martin. Huckabee “joined about 2,000 people Sunday afternoon at the Gwinnett Civic Center in what became not just a fair-tax rally, but a major campaign stop”:
“This race is our best chance to keep the fires burning for the fair tax,” said Huckabee. “And we are not going to squander this opportunity.”
However, as Matthew Yglesias has documented, even conservatives think that the fair tax is a crazy idea. In The New Republic, Jonathan Chait explained why the plan is unworkable:
Tax experts believe that a sales tax above around 10 percent is impossible to enforce because the incentives for cheating are so great. The fair tax would impose a 30 percent sales tax–so high that it would no doubt begin a cycle of black-market sales, resulting in escalating rates to capture the lost revenue, resulting in even more cheating, to the point of total collapse.
Even if the system was sustainable, as Megan McArdle pointed out “It will end up being quite regressive, with the highest effective burden falling on the lower tiers of the middle class.”
The American tax code is, admittedly, a mess, and one that actively encourages income disparity. However, enacting a cockamamie scheme that entirely scraps the current system would just make matters worse. Instead — as explained in Change for America — the U.S. needs to find its way back to a more progressive tax code that helps build “a sustainable, inclusive economy that benefits all.”
6 Responses to “Huckabee Joins Chambliss To Stump For The Fair Tax”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Wonk RoomContact Us
Donate
Please name the tax experts who think that a fair tax in not doable. As a taxpayer I want something that is fair to me and does not take away my incentive for earning a profit. Cheating at taxes is allowed because there are not enough law enforcers to take the cheaters to task.
November 18th, 2008 at 9:40 amIt is the loopholes that make our current tax system a mess. It is the rich like Soros,and others who take advantage of the loopholes.
Us, on main street can never take advantage of any loophole, because we can not afford the legal help to get that done. If you think all farmers are on the federal payment schedule, think again. Besides those payments come from congress, the ones you voted into office.
If anyone thinks the race to lowest common denominator will end with taxes, they are sorely mistaken.
Along with it comes lower pay and reduced benefits. Expect to fully fund your health insurance and retirement.
Also, if anyone doubts our government’s ability to aid corporations, take a look at the $4.28 trillion bailout of the financial sector.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:28 amMarketWatch has a great piece on America’s financial future. It addresses taxes:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Well-Great-Depression-2-2011/story.aspx?guid=%7BB28B49B5%2DEFD1%2D4941%2DB57E%2DA2BA1545BA09%7D&dist=SecMostRead
November 18th, 2008 at 11:51 amThis subject always elicits the funniest responses. Like, It’s a “crazy idea”. Well, if you think that’s crazy, you’ve never run a business and tried to comply with the tax code. It would take some ignorant policy wonk with no real life knowledge to come up with that little gem.
Be that as it may, the “unworkable” meme is just as silly. Really, folks, the reason you tax is to raise money for the government. And, you try to NOT harm the economy while doing so.
The income tax, specificaly that applied to business, is more aptly called the “employment, entrepreneurship, and productivity fine”. It is simply a means of placing domestic business at a financial disadvantage as compared to imports. Domestic business pays the tax (and the even greater cost of attempting to comply with the insane tax code) ,but not imports, and then passes it along in its entirety to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Many countries with large imports to the US have very low or minimal corporate taxes, and generally do not tax productivity or growth (the growth tax, where we punish people for improving or upsizing their business is called “capital gains” ,among other things).
For some reason, there’s a certain segment of our political class who thinks it needs to punish, abuse, and if possible, destroy our business base, by doing everything in their power to place them at a disadvantage for having the audacity to engage in domestic evils… like, employing people.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:57 amNice post The Better Thinker. The Fairtax would help out our domestic businesses and make them more competetive.
As per the original blog post, Megan McArdle pointed out “It will end up being quite regressive, with the highest effective burden falling on the lower tiers of the middle class.” As a Fairtax supporter (caution: biased poster), I was naturally eager to read more about this claim. Sadly, the italicized sentence was perfectly literal. All she did was point it out, she did not provide facts or supporting reports on that claim. It may as well he her opinion, hardly the conclusive stuff I was eager for.
With the Fairtax you need to keep the prebate in mind. No one pays taxes up to the poverty level, including the rich and wealthy. So if you are spending below the poverty line, your purchases are tax free. If you are lower-middle class (just above the poverty line) and spending like it, you only pay taxes on the purchases over the poverty line, or a very small percentage of your purchases. If you are rich and wealthy (regardless of where your income comes from) you pay taxes on maintaining your lifestyle.
So the more you spend, the more you pay in taxes. That makes this a progressive tax plan.
The only way this tax plan becomes regressive is if you spend beyond your means, then you will pay more taxes vis a vis your income. As this is one of the contributing reasons (the fact we are a debtor nation as a whole) we are in the financial crisis we are, having a tax policy that trains people to save and invest might be the best way to prevent this sort of thing in the future.
I will not even go into the other bonuses of the Fairtax this time. In the future, no such promises!
November 18th, 2008 at 4:33 pmDon’t we already have that going on? I mean, there are numerous corporations and citizens who don’t pay any tax and many more who cheat them. I’m not a fan of the “fair tax plan” but that’s a lame argument against it. And, if you compare our current tax plan to the fair tax plan I’ll take the fair tax any day. I mean, income tax for state and federal, sales tax, gas tax, road tolls, phone bill taxes, airline ticket taxes, electric bill taxes, cigarette tax, Social Security tax… We literally pay a tax every time we take a sh!t…. and it’s definitely more than 30% of my income when you include the cost of accountants and all the other expenses of keeping tabs on it all.
I’ll take a “fair tax” over our current “unfair tax” any day.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:54 pm