Have you noticed how few news items there have been in recent days about "Tax day"?
Not a word from any of our presidential candidates, newspaper editors, opinion columnists, nobody!
I know I exagerate, but that is how is seems to me. You would think the presidential canditates would at least have something to say about taxes, but I really didn't expect it. They haven't said or done anything but make our tax situation worse every year.
I realy do miss Mike Huckabee. He was extremely vocal about how broken our income tax system is and he also presented a solution: The FairTax.
By the way, Mike Huckabee has a new website, dedicated to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Check it out at www.huckpac.com. Hopefully he will continue to make a difference by promoting the FairTax.
I hope you or your accountant finished your taxes on time. Mine didn't. We had to cancel an appointment because of illness, sent our tax info to him, and he ignored us in favor of those who saw him in person. Next year is Turbo-Tax year for me!
Bah, humbug!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
96,000 NAMES ON FAIRTAX PETITION!
The following letter is from Ken Hoagland, Communications Director for www.fairtax.org. If you haven't signed the petition yet, please do so today. The FairTax people will be delivering it to Congress on April 15th to show grassroots support for the FairTax and the need to pass it soon:
Dear FairTax supporters:
Wow! We are close! I mean really, REALLY close!
We now have over 96,000 signatures, and need just 4,000 more to hit our target of 100,000 names for our "Pass the FairTax" April 15th petition. Please take a second and help us surpass that goal today.
We know you care about the FairTax, so we'll hope you'll take this last opportunity to add your name now at www.changedc.org and help us hit our 100,000-signature target. As you know, this is a critical time for the FairTax and every voice--especially yours!--counts. So please take a second, make a difference, and help us change DC this tax season.
As you know, we'll be delivering a copy of this petition and 100,000 names to Congress and the leading presidential candidates on April 15th. By signing now, you'll be there too and reminding our elected officials in Washington that demand for the FairTax is growing, and that real change is coming to Washington courtesy of engaged citizens just like you.
Again, thanks for your help during our April 15th "Pass the FairTax" petition. We, literally, could not do this without you!
Sincerely,
Ken Hoagland
Communications Director
Dear FairTax supporters:
Wow! We are close! I mean really, REALLY close!
We now have over 96,000 signatures, and need just 4,000 more to hit our target of 100,000 names for our "Pass the FairTax" April 15th petition. Please take a second and help us surpass that goal today.
We know you care about the FairTax, so we'll hope you'll take this last opportunity to add your name now at www.changedc.org and help us hit our 100,000-signature target. As you know, this is a critical time for the FairTax and every voice--especially yours!--counts. So please take a second, make a difference, and help us change DC this tax season.
As you know, we'll be delivering a copy of this petition and 100,000 names to Congress and the leading presidential candidates on April 15th. By signing now, you'll be there too and reminding our elected officials in Washington that demand for the FairTax is growing, and that real change is coming to Washington courtesy of engaged citizens just like you.
Again, thanks for your help during our April 15th "Pass the FairTax" petition. We, literally, could not do this without you!
Sincerely,
Ken Hoagland
Communications Director
Monday, April 7, 2008
HAVE YOU FINISHED YOUR TAXES YET?
Now that we are down to the wire for this April 15th and you probably have good numbers ready, try out Marlene Tobin's FairTax Calculator at www.fairtaxcalculator.org
You can readily determine your effective tax rate.
After that, find the petition and sign that, to show your support for the FairTax.
After that, "read The FairTax Book" or go to www.fairtax.org and read the basics of the FairTax. Or check out my earlier blogs for shorter explanations of the FairTax.
Write or call your Senators and Representatives in Congress to ask their support for the FairTax.
We FairTax supporters need to do all of this, frequently, to show we are serious about Congress changing the tax code to save our economy, social security, medicare and US.
You can readily determine your effective tax rate.
After that, find the petition and sign that, to show your support for the FairTax.
After that, "read The FairTax Book" or go to www.fairtax.org and read the basics of the FairTax. Or check out my earlier blogs for shorter explanations of the FairTax.
Write or call your Senators and Representatives in Congress to ask their support for the FairTax.
We FairTax supporters need to do all of this, frequently, to show we are serious about Congress changing the tax code to save our economy, social security, medicare and US.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
IT’S THREE A.M.
and your phone rings. It’s the IRS demanding your taxes be paid by April 15th. Are you still working on yours? I am. Or at least, my accountant is. We all will have paid approximately $251 billion by the end of the tax year just to figure out and conform to the many IRS rules and regulations.
We ALL have to file taxes this year if we expect to get our “rebate” from the Federal give-away program. That means much more than the estimated $251 billion will be spent just so we can get that “rebate”.
But wait! That rebate could mean something else besides just getting a hand-out. It could prove that the Federal Government is capable of handing out “pre-bates” if the FairTax were enacted. Just think – by the end of this year, they will have it all figured out just how to do this.
And then, all they have to do is vote in the FairTax (HR25 & S1025), already in committee, co-sponsored by over 70 congressmen and just sitting there waiting for the Government to finally do something about our economy.
Go into www.fairtax.org and sign the petition to get this bill moving. We need lots and lots of signatures to show Congress we mean business. Our country won’t be free much longer if we don’t do something about our economic future. And if our country isn’t free, neither will you be free. Think about it.
We ALL have to file taxes this year if we expect to get our “rebate” from the Federal give-away program. That means much more than the estimated $251 billion will be spent just so we can get that “rebate”.
But wait! That rebate could mean something else besides just getting a hand-out. It could prove that the Federal Government is capable of handing out “pre-bates” if the FairTax were enacted. Just think – by the end of this year, they will have it all figured out just how to do this.
And then, all they have to do is vote in the FairTax (HR25 & S1025), already in committee, co-sponsored by over 70 congressmen and just sitting there waiting for the Government to finally do something about our economy.
Go into www.fairtax.org and sign the petition to get this bill moving. We need lots and lots of signatures to show Congress we mean business. Our country won’t be free much longer if we don’t do something about our economic future. And if our country isn’t free, neither will you be free. Think about it.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
LET'S GET RID OF THE INCOME TAX MESS
Below is a piece written by the National Communications Director of the FairTax.org. It is rather long, but a good read.
The Income Tax Mess
By
Ken Hoagland
This year American businesses and individual taxpayers will, astoundingly, pay more than $265 billion in tax preparation costs just to comply with our nearly indecipherable 67,500 pages of income tax regulations. Although universally despised, the income tax system has, for all the wrong reasons, strong defenders in Washington.
The income tax is big business in Washington. More than half of all lobby expenditures in any given year are devoted to winning tax code breaks. While Republicans and Democrats disagree on almost everything else, in Congress they are equally enamored of manipulating the tax code. Providing special breaks for favored constituents, punishing political opponents and affecting the behavior of citizens is pursued with equal vigor on both sides of the aisle. The process has created a complex mess.
Warren Buffet and other American millionaires and billionaires will pay a lower tax rate again this year than their secretaries. If you are married, you will pay higher taxes than two people living together. If you continue working while collecting Social Security, your benefits will be taxed. If you are an American business, “embedded” income and payroll tax costs will account for as much as 20 percent of the price of your goods and services.
These costs and the highest corporate tax rate in the world make American products are far less competitive both here and abroad. Our income tax system has actually helped drive more than $12 trillion of American wealth offshore in recent years.
But if you happen to find a job on the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee or the Joint Committee on Taxation as either a staffer or, better yet, an elected representative, you have a bright future with the tax code. Seven figure signing bonuses are not uncommon when “K St” tax lobby firms are looking for talent and connections. Is it any wonder that taxpayers hear frequent promises that “something must be done” but that the tax code only gets more complex, unfair and dysfunctional?
The difference between what is owed and what is collected by the IRS is about $350 billion and will result in average tax bills being about $2,000 higher than they would be otherwise. Many middle class taxpayers would have been hit with an additional $2,000 tax this year if not for another one-year legislative “patch” of the 1969 error of the tax writing committees in not indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax for inflation. While every eligible taxpayer is looking forward to welcome rebates this year, the money to stimulate our economy is, in fact, borrowed from China and other lender nations. There is a better way.
The most viable alternative to the current system remains the FairTax, a progressive national consumption tax with 70 Congressional co-sponsors and a growing citizen base clamoring for change. Unlike the current system, it taxes the $1.5 trillion underground economy, transforms twelve million illegal immigrants into taxpayers as consumers, and ends the marriage penalty, the corporate tax, the capital gains tax, the inheritance tax and all income and payroll taxes.
It eliminates all federal taxes on the poor, gives the middle class a healthy tax break and taxes billionaire’s spending at an equal level. Every wage earner takes home their entire (federal withholding free) paycheck under the FairTax.
It also provides a far broader base of revenues into the faltering Social Security and Medicare programs. Most experts concede that adoption of the FairTax would stimulate trillions of dollars of foreign investment into the US economy but for predictably self- interested reasons the tax lobby hates the FairTax despite its clear benefits to the nation.
Even without prominent FairTax advocate and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on the campaign trail and despite blatant distortions from Washington, the national FairTax campaign continues to grow at the grassroots level. Like all citizen driven reforms, it is building toward the day when enough taxpayers can finally overcome Congress’ self-interest in their favorite plaything, the cause of our annual tax torture and a millstone around the neck of our economy.
The Income Tax Mess
By
Ken Hoagland
This year American businesses and individual taxpayers will, astoundingly, pay more than $265 billion in tax preparation costs just to comply with our nearly indecipherable 67,500 pages of income tax regulations. Although universally despised, the income tax system has, for all the wrong reasons, strong defenders in Washington.
The income tax is big business in Washington. More than half of all lobby expenditures in any given year are devoted to winning tax code breaks. While Republicans and Democrats disagree on almost everything else, in Congress they are equally enamored of manipulating the tax code. Providing special breaks for favored constituents, punishing political opponents and affecting the behavior of citizens is pursued with equal vigor on both sides of the aisle. The process has created a complex mess.
Warren Buffet and other American millionaires and billionaires will pay a lower tax rate again this year than their secretaries. If you are married, you will pay higher taxes than two people living together. If you continue working while collecting Social Security, your benefits will be taxed. If you are an American business, “embedded” income and payroll tax costs will account for as much as 20 percent of the price of your goods and services.
These costs and the highest corporate tax rate in the world make American products are far less competitive both here and abroad. Our income tax system has actually helped drive more than $12 trillion of American wealth offshore in recent years.
But if you happen to find a job on the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee or the Joint Committee on Taxation as either a staffer or, better yet, an elected representative, you have a bright future with the tax code. Seven figure signing bonuses are not uncommon when “K St” tax lobby firms are looking for talent and connections. Is it any wonder that taxpayers hear frequent promises that “something must be done” but that the tax code only gets more complex, unfair and dysfunctional?
The difference between what is owed and what is collected by the IRS is about $350 billion and will result in average tax bills being about $2,000 higher than they would be otherwise. Many middle class taxpayers would have been hit with an additional $2,000 tax this year if not for another one-year legislative “patch” of the 1969 error of the tax writing committees in not indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax for inflation. While every eligible taxpayer is looking forward to welcome rebates this year, the money to stimulate our economy is, in fact, borrowed from China and other lender nations. There is a better way.
The most viable alternative to the current system remains the FairTax, a progressive national consumption tax with 70 Congressional co-sponsors and a growing citizen base clamoring for change. Unlike the current system, it taxes the $1.5 trillion underground economy, transforms twelve million illegal immigrants into taxpayers as consumers, and ends the marriage penalty, the corporate tax, the capital gains tax, the inheritance tax and all income and payroll taxes.
It eliminates all federal taxes on the poor, gives the middle class a healthy tax break and taxes billionaire’s spending at an equal level. Every wage earner takes home their entire (federal withholding free) paycheck under the FairTax.
It also provides a far broader base of revenues into the faltering Social Security and Medicare programs. Most experts concede that adoption of the FairTax would stimulate trillions of dollars of foreign investment into the US economy but for predictably self- interested reasons the tax lobby hates the FairTax despite its clear benefits to the nation.
Even without prominent FairTax advocate and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on the campaign trail and despite blatant distortions from Washington, the national FairTax campaign continues to grow at the grassroots level. Like all citizen driven reforms, it is building toward the day when enough taxpayers can finally overcome Congress’ self-interest in their favorite plaything, the cause of our annual tax torture and a millstone around the neck of our economy.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
EDITORIAL: WHY WE NEED A DIFFERENT TAX
This editorial is from the Albany Democrat Herald in Albany, OR. This editor has obviously read The FairTax Book and is ready for a change. He brings up a very good point: Why are the Presidential candidates not addressing our flawed income tax system? Now is the time!
Editorial: Why we need a different tax.
The tax-filing season is revving up to its nail-biting conclusion in less than three weeks. So you would think voters would demand that federal candidates, especially for president, speak about their plans for relieving Americans of this annual ordeal.
But the voters don’t ask, and if the candidates have any such plans, they are keeping mum. No one who actually reads the federal tax instructions can believe that sane people wrote the laws on which they are based. Maybe the trouble is that more people don’t read them, which they can avoid doing by filing a simplified return or having their returns done by a pro.
So one idea for reform would be a requirement that every voter read at least the instructions for Form 1040 and pass a test. After all, the voters are responsible for sending to Congress the people who are responsible for the laws — either by writing them or refusing to change them — that form the basis of the instructions.
But that’s assuming that the present system is worth keeping, which plainly it is not. It’s not worth keeping not only because it demands that you file a return and go through all kinds of contortions, in terms of record keeping and computations, in order to meet the requirements of the law. If that doesn’t amount to involuntary servitude, name something that does.
The system also leads to wide discrepancies in what people owe, owing to peculiar circumstances. Savings are required for long-term economic health, but savings are taxed, and so are any earnings from savings. And perhaps worst of all, even though from some people it confiscates enormous sums, overall the federal tax system does not raise nearly enough money to cover the outlays that Congress continues to approve.
We need two things to reset the balance. Even though the idea has not been seriously mentioned in a decade or longer, we need a requirement that government spending be limited to roughly the same as income every year. And we need a tax system that collects the necessary revenue without the need for filing returns.
Whether we call it a sales tax or a value-added tax, or even a “fair tax,” some universal consumption tax like that would fill the bill. (hh)
Editorial: Why we need a different tax.
The tax-filing season is revving up to its nail-biting conclusion in less than three weeks. So you would think voters would demand that federal candidates, especially for president, speak about their plans for relieving Americans of this annual ordeal.
But the voters don’t ask, and if the candidates have any such plans, they are keeping mum. No one who actually reads the federal tax instructions can believe that sane people wrote the laws on which they are based. Maybe the trouble is that more people don’t read them, which they can avoid doing by filing a simplified return or having their returns done by a pro.
So one idea for reform would be a requirement that every voter read at least the instructions for Form 1040 and pass a test. After all, the voters are responsible for sending to Congress the people who are responsible for the laws — either by writing them or refusing to change them — that form the basis of the instructions.
But that’s assuming that the present system is worth keeping, which plainly it is not. It’s not worth keeping not only because it demands that you file a return and go through all kinds of contortions, in terms of record keeping and computations, in order to meet the requirements of the law. If that doesn’t amount to involuntary servitude, name something that does.
The system also leads to wide discrepancies in what people owe, owing to peculiar circumstances. Savings are required for long-term economic health, but savings are taxed, and so are any earnings from savings. And perhaps worst of all, even though from some people it confiscates enormous sums, overall the federal tax system does not raise nearly enough money to cover the outlays that Congress continues to approve.
We need two things to reset the balance. Even though the idea has not been seriously mentioned in a decade or longer, we need a requirement that government spending be limited to roughly the same as income every year. And we need a tax system that collects the necessary revenue without the need for filing returns.
Whether we call it a sales tax or a value-added tax, or even a “fair tax,” some universal consumption tax like that would fill the bill. (hh)
Monday, March 24, 2008
EXEMPT FOOD & MEDICINE FROM FAIRTAX? GET REAL!
A FairTax volunteer e-mailed this article - a must-read................................
Why not just exempt food and medicine from the tax? Wouldn’t that be fair and simple?
Exempting items by category is neither fair nor simple. Respected economists have shown that the wealthy spend much more on unprepared food, clothing, housing, and medical care than do the poor. Exempting these goods, as many state sales taxes do, actually gives the wealthy a disproportionate benefit.
Also, today these purchases are not exempted from federal taxation. The purchase of food, clothing, and medical services is made from after-income-tax and after-payroll-tax dollars, while their purchase price hides the cost of corporate taxes and private sector compliance costs.
Finally, exempting one product or service, but not another, opens the door to the army of lobbyists and special interest groups that plague and distort our taxation system today. Those who have the money will send lobbyists to Washington to obtain special tax breaks in their own self-interest. This process causes unfair and inefficient distortions in our economy and must be stopped.
Why not just exempt food and medicine from the tax? Wouldn’t that be fair and simple?
Exempting items by category is neither fair nor simple. Respected economists have shown that the wealthy spend much more on unprepared food, clothing, housing, and medical care than do the poor. Exempting these goods, as many state sales taxes do, actually gives the wealthy a disproportionate benefit.
Also, today these purchases are not exempted from federal taxation. The purchase of food, clothing, and medical services is made from after-income-tax and after-payroll-tax dollars, while their purchase price hides the cost of corporate taxes and private sector compliance costs.
Finally, exempting one product or service, but not another, opens the door to the army of lobbyists and special interest groups that plague and distort our taxation system today. Those who have the money will send lobbyists to Washington to obtain special tax breaks in their own self-interest. This process causes unfair and inefficient distortions in our economy and must be stopped.
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