If I wrote the tax code, here’s what I would like: First, end, kill, clobber, remove, nix, the most terrifying of the 365 days, (366 on Leap Year), ‘Tax day’, (April 15th)!
Next, I would like to keep all of my money and not loan it out each year to the federal government, interest free!
Can you even imagine how much GDP could be recouped if no one had to spend a single minute strategizing how to minimize tax burden, gather scraps of paper and inane records of hundreds of past events, categorize, and fret over, whether I can do it myself this year, or must I hire a tax preparer? If you do, you could spend hours on phone calls, emails, and texts to coordinate with them, dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’!
And, even if you do hire out, you and they still have to contend with the reams, way more than a couple of reams (each 500 pages) and growing each year) out of tricky, slippery, confusing, and deliberately obfuscarally written tax codes!
(I christen ‘obfuscarally’ a new word! ‘Obfuscationally, also not a word, just didn’t ‘get it’ for me!)
So that is my third change to our tax code, let’s shrink the paperwork from a current estimated over 13 reams of pure, grade-A, USDA, Federal Income Tax Code, and, (are you sitting down for this,) to fully understand what Congress has put together to regulate our taxes, that book blows up to an astonishing 150 reams of confusion, loopholes, corruption, controls added by ‘Big brother’ (tax penalties and spiffs to keep you on their agenda), and a sure-fire guarantee that the DOJ can prosecute you for missing a few lines on page 74,831, if they so desire!
What if by passing a simple bill, one not dripping in congressional pork, you could reduce that tax code to the size of a cook book (several hundred pages), far less than a single ream of paper, a single volume you could easily read in less than a week?
‘Too good to be true!’, you scoff! But, just like the late-night TV commercial, “..That’s not all folks, you also lose April 15th! Yes, it becomes, just another day”, as it no longer is a threatening deadline; maybe we should declare it a national holiday to celebrate our ‘federal tax independence day‘?
And, in the spirit of that late-night TV announcer, ‘If you vote now for H.R. 25, you not only lose 74,600 pages of tax code, gain a carefree day each year, but also you will no longer have to give 0% interest loans to our government, you can fire your tax preparer, and hire a financial consultant to help you manage all the extra money you get to keep from your monthly paycheck!
I’m sure you guessed by now that I am referring to the much maligned ‘Fair Tax’ bill. It is an easy target for those greedy folks in D.C. to smear with drive-by remarks like ‘It will raise your taxes to 23%!’, and ‘It will end all of your deductions!’ Oh, horror of all horrors! Run from this awful H.R. 25! It will end humanity as we know it!
What this ‘Fair Tax’ bill really does, is it stops them from withholding a single penny for federal taxes! Whatever they were taking, stops! That is now your money! Next, they do not charge you anything for earning money! Imagine a system where earning money is no longer penalized! Do you think the GDP would gain a boost from that?
Okay, so how does the federal government get funded? Not with IRS agents, as they are no longer needed; since we’ll need a whole lot more financial consultants, they should quickly retrain! The government gets funding when you buy something! They take that hefty 23% at time of purchase, and only on new items if the code holds true there; I worry that Congress may find that ‘a bridge too far’! Currently we are taxed over and over on the same money! H.R. 25 would only allow the federal government to tax at ‘point of sale’ on new (never bought) items!
Loopholes evaporate with 25 feet of regulations, so the wealthy pay for their extravagant tastes at the same rate, so actually they get hit far harder than now, but enjoy many benefits, like downsizing their tax departments, and being able to grow larger with no penalties as earning money is all positive now. Companies always flourish when regulations are removed. This magnanimously simplifies their paths to success! It also takes away the federal government’s puppet strings that have forced industry to ‘go with the agenda of the week’.
Why do so many in Congress oppose the ‘Fair Tax’ bill? That’s easy to understand; because it takes humongous power away from them, and gives it to you and me! Like the little boy with a magnifying glass lording over an ant hill, those against H.R. 25 know they will lose the ‘incentives’ those 75000 pages have darkly crafted; those ‘strings’ to manipulate us to follow what ever agenda they concoct.
They also enjoy having your money, interest free by ‘withholding’ it from your paycheck and ceremoniously awarding it back after you jump through all the hoops, and as a bonus, they get to keep what you and your tax preparer missed in the 25 foot thick book of current tax codes! All the tax code regulations bound into a single hypothetical volume would not fit in my living room! It might in my living room and dining room combined, if strategically placed…
If you want to know the facts, just browse https://fairtax.org/
As in a magician’s slight of hand trick, Congress fools you into thinking a 23% tax is far more than you are paying now. When it settles out, the Fair Tax collects the same amount needed to fund the country, no more, no less.
There would be no capital gains tax, so if your investments, stocks, or business deals make money, it’s all yours, enjoy it like Scrooge McDuck! This goes for a lemonade stand, all the way up to Elon Musk! Our current system punishes profit, H.R. 25 is only funded by willful purchases. This would supercharge the economy, it would be like no tax on tips, for everybody! You earn it, you keep it!
The biggest difference is, it is done transparently! If you don’t like what you are paying, vote for a representative that will rein in spending, and as a direct result, your tax percentage will drop by statute! Trust me, or dig into the weeds on the Fair Tax website, you are already paying the same 23%, it is just conveniently hidden in other ‘taxes’ that get removed when H.R. 25 passes.
In the words of Janice Joplin, ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose’; vote in the right people to pass H.R. 25, and crack open your cage!
As thought-provoking and practical as anything, Ben Franklin might've penned… It makes too much sense and for that reason it's doomed to die in the halls of Congress… My sincere thanks to Mr. Windsor for bringing the fair tax bill to light. I didn't even know it existed or how good it was...now I do!!..great job Mark keep up the good work.
Along with what you have clearly stated is the fact that as long as they can keep us distracted and battling amongst ourselves on so many other issues, we will never coalesce against them as a solid front.