John Linder

The FairTax Book- Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS

1 stars (The Cato Institute Objects to the national ales tax idea) - No doubt HR 25 has been studied by the best of minds; the Cato Institute is a non-profit public policy research foundation (think tank) headquartered in Washington, D.C. Here are four potent objections it lists to the national sales tax: Objection 1. The sales tax is regressive. The rebate feature of the national sales tax makes this proposal nonregressive. Remember, a family of four would pay no tax on its first $20,000 of purchases each year. This is the equivalent of a zero bracket under the income tax. It is similar to the Armey personal deduction--though not as generous. There are various ways of providing this rebate. Assuming that the sales tax were set at 18 percent, a family of four would be entitled to a rebate of $3,600 ($20,000 x 18 percent) for the year. The government could send a quarterly rebate check of $900 to every family of four; a $450 check to every family of two; and so on. Another possibility would be to provide every family with an annual "smart card" that would have a sales tax credit based on family size. A married couple with no kids would receive a $10,000 credit on its card. Each time the couple made a purchase, the smart card would deduct that amount until the card's $10,000 credit was used up. After the first $10,000 of purchases, the family would begin to pay the sales tax. So it dead wrong to argue that a sales tax is inherently regressive. Objection 2: A sales tax of 18 percent would entail large- scale evasion. A national sales tax of 18 percent, when added to the existing states sales taxes, would bring the total sales tax to between 20 and 25 percent. Critics are right when they argue that a sales tax this high would encourage evasion. But compared to what? Evasion is already a huge problem with the income tax. An estimated $150 billion of income tax goes uncollected each year--according to the IRS's own calculations. Moreover, states report th...
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