Tax Reform and the Fairtax

Last night, my dad and I rolled into the driveway at a quarter of midnight after a round trip of over 250 miles. Now why would anyone be out on a Monday night on that kind of trip?

The answer is we were giving a presentation to a Farm Bureau board in a distant county on the Fairtax. Or I should say, I was assisting my father as he gave the presentation. Yes, it is more volunteer work that I'm writing about. There are important causes that need volunteers and they are the ones people don't think about first. These are civic minded causes, not charities, and are very important because they are about things that affect most of us, not just some of us. In this case, it is one of the two things you can't escape in life and it isn't death. It's the other one, taxes.

We are being taxed to death in this country, mainly because of non-compliance that adds up to the hundreds of billions of dollars and the federal taxes inflicted in every step of production of products. That's one of the big reasons all our factories are being moved overseas, other countries give massive tax breaks as well as have cheaper labor. Most of the taxes we pay are hidden from us, as companies pass their tax burdens to us in the retail price of products but even with that it is still too expensive to manufacture in the USA. Well, unless you are the Japanese, who have it even worse and are building more and more automotive plants in the Midwest. Anyway, we need to do something to simplify taxes and take the burdens off of the middle class and poor, but most of all make taxation completely transparent to the American people.

The best solution to this and the only one that really guarantees fairness is the national sales tax proposal called the Fairtax. Please check out Fairtax.org and especially their FAQ here. It will take some studying to understand it totally, but once you do you will most likely approve of it. Right now, 50% of the lobbyists in Washington, D.C. are there lobbying for tax exemptions and legislation to for companies or organizations who want tax breaks. This is how our Senators and Congressmen dispense favors and is a source of great power in the Legislative branch. Pork in earmarks and riders attached to bills often includes specially worded exemptions for specific corporations without actually naming the company. We get the Fairtax in and the 16th Amendment repealed and we'll see the biggest transfer of power from the federal government back to the people since the Bill of Rights was passed.