Must Read Book! (the fairtax book)

If you are an american taxpayer (or will at some point be one, or married to one), you must read this book:

I'm only halfway through, but am thoroughly convinced that everyone in america needs to read this.

It details the history of the income tax in America, what the problems inherent to this system are and simply describes the solution.

Some important notes from the first half:

1. Number two of Karl Marx's 10 step process for creating a communist society is "a heavy progressive or graduated income tax" (number 10 is "free education for all children in public schools" but that's another post).
2. The 16th amendment to the Constitution of the United States technically violates the 4th amendment (16th - making forced seizure of an individual's income [up to 100%] legal, 4th - right to be free from illegal search/seizure of property). The IRS has the right to do things that judges would never allow a local police department from doing
3. Each year, the government collects nearly $1.5 trillion ($1,500,000,000,000 if you need to see the zeroes) in income taxes. Collectively, our nation spends roughly $500 billion ($500,000,000,000) in maintaining compliance with the current tax laws.
4. It has also been calculated that in 2002 individuals, non-profits and businesses spent a combined 5.8 billion hours complying with tax code. That translates to 8,700 people's entire lives if they live to about 70 years old. Another way of looking at it is that for a 40 hour work week with a couple of weeks of vacation a year, this would be 2.7 million full time jobs. That is a tremendous amount of wasted time that isn't necessary!

A brief summary of the pending legislation (H.R. 25 and S.25 for the House and Senate, respetively):

1. Abolish the individual, corporate, and business income taxes, capital gains, social security, and medicare taxes.
2. This will lead to an overall reduction in the cost of consumer goods because there is an "embedded tax" of roughly 22% for most retail/service goods. By "embedded tax" the authors describe the costs that all individuals in the supply chain have to pad into their cost of doing business.
3. There will be - as proposed in the bills - a 23% national retail sales tax added. For most purchases, this translates to only paying a few pennies more than the previous price after the embedded taxes are removed and the market adjusts prices.
4. This also is a boost overall, because you take home EVERY PENNY you make. There is NO withholding of taxes (from a federal perspective).
5. In addition to that, there is the concept of a "prebate." For a given family size, the amount of expenses for life essentials is estimated and the tax on those goods (food and other things necessary for existence) is calculated (based on some poverty level indicators). That is divided into 12 and every month, consumers get a check or debit card that has that balance at the beginning of the month which one can then use to purchase such goods.

I need to keep reading for more info, but some of the predicted side effects are just short of revolutionary.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE read this book. Buy it, get it from the library, borrow someone else's copy - but read it!

Then, get in touch with your congressmen and let them know that you support this!
If you have more questions, go to the Americans for Fair Taxation website.