2nd Session

A few highlights from Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder on the "Fair Tax".

-The Fair tax creates one sales tax, and eliminates all other taxes (income tax, capital gains, estate tax, etc...). It also limits the amount of information the IRS can hold about someone.

-This would lower the price of goods by eliminating most of the taxes that rise the costs of goods

-The tax is only paid when a family overspends the poverty level for their family size.

-The cost of filling out tax returns amounts to over $350 Billion Dollars

-The biggest change is the change to stop taxing wages to taxing wealth. The wealthiest people in this country don't receive wages, so they get out of paying taxes.

-The current tax code is used to control the behavior of the citizens, the Fair Tax could not be utilized in this manner.

-Lobbyists and Government workers are against it mainly because a complicated tax code keeps them in business.

-The way that the Fair Tax will be implemented is through a groundswell of support from the grassroots. To sign up with Fair Tax you can do so on-line at http://www.fairtax.org/

-Criticisms of the Fair Tax:

-- It's not 23% it's 30%
-The law will say that the price of goods at stores will include the Fair Tax
-- It doesn't reduce government spending
-It's tax reform, not government reform
-- It doesn't get rid ofthe 16th Amendment
-If it got rid of the 16th Amendment it would have to be an Amendment itself, which increases the difficulty of it getting passed
--Bruce Bartlett said that the Fair Tax is "part of the Church of Scientology"
-Years before Fair Tax there was an organization from the Church of Scientology that had a very rudimentary version. It was formed mainly because the IRS refused to grant the Church of Scientology tax exempt status.

-The Fair Tax is a revolution, which can only happen from the bottom up, not from the top-down.

-If the US doesn't institute it first, the country that does will immediately become the haven for all business

-To summarize the answer given of the questions: jobs will come back to the US because of the tax system; everyone outside of Washington is with the Fair Tax (including CPAs); unfortunately it does not directly affect local (property) taxes, however the states will be pressured to copy that system.

-If Texas went to the Fair Tax the state would get the same amount of money from a 2.5% sales tax as it would from the 8.5% sales tax that is around most of the state.