Chairman Reports

THE CHINA TARIFF DISPUTE—LARGELY UNNECESSARY Read More.

The Swamp is confused by the growing unrest about the IRS not providing free filing software to lower income taxpayers. Congress is requiring lower income taxpayers to rely on “free” software provided by tax preparation companies like TurboTax and H&R Block. The Swamp asks, What is the big deal? Read More.

The first federal excise tax on gasoline was one cent when it was first instituted in 1932. Since 1993, it has been 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel fuel. It has not been adjusted for the approximately 73% of inflation. This means that it takes $1.73 in today’s dollars to purchase $1.00 of goods in 1993. Read More.

Some call him our greatest President, but how was Lincoln when it came to taxation? Would he have been a FAIRtax ally? Read on. Read More.

In 1837, Hans Christian Andersen wrote a fable entitled The Emperor’s New Clothes. The Emperor really didn’t care about his people but only about getting new clothes to show off to the people in his court and to his subjects. Read More.

Over the years, I have met and often been on panels with many economists—some Nobel Prize-winning economists. Almost all these men and women were personable and treated me with reasonable deference as they dismissed my arguments about the advantages of the FAIRtax over the present income/payroll tax system. Read More.

Understanding ‘swamp talk’ isn’t easy. Politicians often say one thing and do another, while families and small businesses pay the price… Read More.

In USA Today, Ways And Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady published an op-ed where he boasted that the recently enacted tax plan said “…good riddance to that outdated monstrosity of a tax code that took too much of your money, sent our American jobs overseas, and kept our economy so slow many workers didn’t see a pay raise for a decade or more.” Read More.

Privacy is important to every American. But do you have the privacy you think you do? The IRS may have other thoughts. Read on. Read More.

Realtors would see a big benefit from the FAIRtax (and so would everyone else). So why aren’t they lobbying in favor of real tax reform? Read More.

People in the real estate industry have long championed the Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID). The MID allows a taxpayer to reduce the amount of income subject to the federal income tax by the amount paid in interest on their home mortgage… Read More.

There’s a new idea floating around the Senate: Taxing an individual’s wealth, not just their income. Our Chairman, a former tax attorney, discusses this new wealth tax in this week’s Chairman’s Report. Read on! Read More.

States with high taxes aren’t happy about the recent tax cuts. Why? Because their taxes are too high. So who to blame? The federal government who cut taxes, of course. Read More.

When the FAIRtax is explained to many audiences, it is easy to see people thinking of the impact on their family if items were increased in price by 23%. Since most in the audience are on a budget, the prospect of suddenly paying that much more is very concerning… Read More.

As the years pass, many of us find that some physical things are not as easy as they used to be. For some, there is new meaning to Sonny Steele’s (played by Robert Redford) statement to Hallie Martin (played by Jane Fonda) in the movie Electric Horseman, “Some parts wake up faster than others.” Read More.