The FAIRtax- The lady doth protest too much, methinks!

The FAIRtax is once again in the mainstream news given the insistence from certain lawmakers that the FAIRtax Act of 2023, H.R. 25, get a vote on the House floor.  This of course will be a red-letter day for the FAIRtax because since its first introduction in 1999, it has never received a House floor vote.  Until now, it has languished and died in the House Ways and Means Committee in every previous Congress.  The obvious question is why is the vast majority of press the FAIRtax receives negative?  Why are “news stories” about the FAIRtax often accompanied by swarms of misinformation or the reaction that the FAIRtax is a pipe dream and not feasible?  This sounds like the equivalent of the age-old adolescent argument of it will not work, “just because”.

Let’s examine a foundational truth.  When there is a gargantuan problem, and the problem has persisted for a significant length of time but no solution to the problem is ever implemented or truly considered, there is usually a common thread at play.

Of course, we allude to the debacle that is the IRS and our current income and payroll tax system.  Its grossly inefficient, regressive to our working poor, impossible to understand, and rife with illegal evasion amounting to at the very least, $1 trillion every single year.

No rational argument has ever been put forth in support of the IRS and the income and payroll tax system, its processes or bloated budget of approximately $12 billion per year (before the Inflation Reduction Act’s IRS funding explosion).  So why then does the current system persist?  Why does the IRS continue to survive and even grow year after year given that it is hopelessly outdated, punitive, and a major drag on the U.S. economy?

The simple answer is that entrenched interests continue to make two things off of the status quo.  What are these two things?  It’s not hard to guess that the first one is money—and lots of it.  Think K-street lobbyists six-figure incomes, members of Congress receiving a continual cycle of campaign contributions to amend the Internal Revenue Code at its fringes, and a perpetual political tool of demagoguery (e.g., one class of people are greedy and need to pay their “fair share,” etc.). 

The second is power.  The political establishment has an insatiable desire for power over peoples’ lives, and the US tax code gives them enormous power to influence our behavior and our decisions.

Think about the power to confiscate hard earned income and wealth and think about the power and privilege-garnering tool to redistribute U.S. Treasury receipts for runaway government spending that benefits our politician’s friends, family, and business interests.  

Lastly, the power to attack, persecute, and silence one’s political opponents is an insipid temptation that the income tax continually offers up to the weakest of our leaders.

So, when you read mainstream media articles about how the FAIRtax could “never work,” or how the FAIRtax is regressive, or that the rate is too high to be feasible, ask yourself what is really at play here? 

Why are the political elites so adamant about keeping a failing system that’s spiraling out of control as $1 trillion a year goes uncollected?  What’s stopping them from changing to the simple, efficient, visible FAIRtax system with its regression-protecting prebate mechanism?  Why do they insist on taxing people’s hard-earned income?  

Just as in Hamlet, when Queen Gertrude responds with her famous quip that “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” when the opposite Hamlet player appears insincere in her overly emotional overreaction to a marriage, so too is the mainstream media’s persistent refrain that the FAIRtax just couldn’t work, the FAIRtax is regressive, or the FAIRtax rate is too high.
 

WHAT CAN EACH OF US DO? 

We can write letters and make calls to our elected representatives demanding that if the government really wants to eliminate the burden of filing income tax returns, they should enact the FAIRtax and do away with tax returns altogether.
The great 18th century Irish statesman Edmund Burke made a statement that applies in many ways,

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

Remember, if we don't continue to tell the truth and demand a change, then this quote from George Orwell's 1984 may foretell our children's future:

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

Take back control!   Help us PASS THE FAIRTAX!

The IRS will be gone and we will pay our taxes when we make purchases.  

WE and not the Ruling Class and their minions in D.C. will decide how much federal tax we pay!

If you have friends who don’t know about the FAIRtax, send them to  FAIRtax.org.  Have them watch the white boards under “How It Works” and, if they agree, ask them to please join us.

Then contact your Members of Congress and the President and demand that Congress pass -the FAIRtax—the only fair tax. 

Is it hopeless?  When confronted with a seemingly impossible problem, remember the statement attributed to the author George Bernard Shaw who wrote, You see things; and you say “Why?”  But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”

Isn’t it time for us to ask, “Why not?”