Publisher: Regan Books
Authors: Neal Boortz John Linder
List Price: $24.95
Amazon Price: $15.72
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Summary: Everyone should read this.
Everyone knows that the current system is wrong. This spells out a better alternative.
Summary: Boortz wants a Welfare state
The so-called Fair Tax sets up a welfare state where the spoiled children of billionaires (like Paris Hilton) get billions of dollars for nothing. They didn't work for it and they didn't earn it. Yet Boortz thinks this "welfare" is the greatest thing since televangelists and country music. America is about working for a living and earning your keep. This communist philosophy that some are "more equal" than others so they should be allowed to keep what they didn't earn tax free is the pinnacle of Bortz's argument.
The Fair Tax plan is akin to starting a Monopoly game after all the good properties are sold and have hotels sitting on them. Like saying, "I have Boardwalk and Park Place, and this entire side of the board, but from now on we will all pay sales tax on new property. However, I can keep the property I have tax free and pass it to my kids tax free too." If forces young couples to pay huge taxes on new houses while the rich can simply pass the property from generation to generation totally free of taxes.
It kills social security and forces the government to borrow to keep up. It puts huge taxes on prescription drugs, hospital stays, medical treatment. Yet it makes stocks, bonds, and capital gains tax free. It is simply a way to push the tax burden to the poor and middle class.
A good alternative would be to tax all money that was not earned or worked for. If you didn't earn it with your muscles or your brain then you should pay a sizable tax on it. If you got it for free without earning it from inheritance, gambling, capital gains, etc. then you should pay. That's FAIR.
The ditto heads are always talking about how the rich pay higher taxes on their income. Income is a fanciful term dreamed up by tax accountants and tax lawyers that has no basis in reality. What we need to talk about is WEALTH. Ninety percent of the wealth is controlled by three percent of the population. Wealth is property, capital, stocks, bonds, and luxury items. People don't realize that most wealth people control private corporations where they deduct the cost of their food, travel, wardrobe, entertainment, energy bills, and housing and pay an average of 15 percent income tax on an amount that they decide to report to the IRS.
Here's a real FAIR TAX - no taxes for anyone as long as you are alive. Spend all you have and all you make on whatever you want and pay zero taxes. But when you and your spouse die, the kids that get what you left pay a 50% tax. That's FAIR.
Make it even more FAIR by letting the taxpayer tell the government what his tax dollars should be spent on. Every time you fill out a tax return you should get to pick from among 20 choices of where your money will go. Then make it illegal for the government to borrow money from the bank or from other government agency budgets. The taxpayer has the final word. That's FAIR.
Summary: too much change too fast
A National Sales Tax is such a radical change with so many different avenues from where it can be legitimately attacked, that whatever its benefits, it should be a complete nonstarter from a political standpoint.
On the other hand, a flat tax with ONE and only ONE deduction for your home would vastly improve the current federal income tax and with serious support from the President could get through Congress. I don't know what allowing for a deduction for your home mortgage does to the numbers and what rate would be needed to make the plan revenue neutral. But not allowing the home ownership deduction would make the reform extremely vulnerable politically, and could be a fatal stumbling block towards getting any plan passed.
Serious tax reform and simplification would be a major accomplishment for the President, and more importantly, would be an enormous boost for the American economy.
A National Sales Tax isn't going to happen for a lot of reasons, the first being it is probably bad tax policy. But a Flat Tax or a considerably simplified income tax are very real possibilities, and well worth expenditures of President Bush's political capital.
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