FairTax would replace federal tax system with simple alternative When you get to the Whittier Daily News, search for the Fairtax and you’ll find the article. It’s written by Peter Uberroth (his bio at the bottom)

Some great points are made in this article:

REPLACING our income and Social Security tax systems with a consumption tax FairTax, the best supported bill in this election cycle, depends not on whom is in the White House but on American taxpayers of all strata expressing their ire to elected servants.

It would put the decision making back into the hands of the people, where it belongs, as our forefathers envisioned it.

Women did not win the right to vote through quiet parlor discussions alone; they also marched in the streets. Unions did not achieve collective bargaining until they sat down and shut down manufacturing plants. Blacks took their seats at the front of the bus and at the lunch counter, and then took to the streets. These grassroots successes set the example for how we replace our fatally flawed income and payroll tax systems.

Just like the Wide Awakes marched for Lincoln in 1860, a small group lights the brushfires of freedom, once again! All we need to do is arm ourselves with information and share it with others! The closer you look at this bill, the more it makes absolute and complete sense.

As for a rate comparable to income/payroll taxes, delivering the same revenue raised today, an organization I support (FairTax.org) quotes 23 percent. This rate is generally confirmed by many of the leading public finance economists in the country: Dale Jorgenson, Harvard (22.9 percent ); Jim Poterba, MIT (23.1 percent ); Laurence Kotlikoff, Boston University (24 percent); and rates from 22.3 to 24 percent from Stanford University, The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, and Fiscal Associates.

This is about the best-researched legislation to date, as far as I can recall. They’ve called upon some heavy-weight experts to analyze the impact to our pocketbooks. As the SunnyeSide puts it: After $22 millions and three years of research by the best economic minds in the country on tax issues; researchers from Harvard, Stanford, Boston University, Rice, MIT and the National Bureau of Economic Research, this is about the most thoroughly researched policy issues ever introduced in Congress.

Under the FairTax, effective tax rates go down for the middle class. Their paychecks come to them complete, with no federal withholding of any kind. Their paychecks are no longer minus the regressive Social Security tax, which is even more painful to working poor.

Gone would be the dooms-day threat of huge payroll tax increases to fund much needed Social Security reform. Under the FairTax, no American pays a dime of tax, hidden or obvious, on the necessities of life up to the poverty level. Individuals keep no records, file no returns, and suffer no audits.

Financial institutions are no longer required to perform taxpayer surveillance operations. Under the FairTax, individual American taxpayers become invisible to the federal tax collector, as do their families, churches, and businesses.

A net tax increase or tax decrease? This will be up to the individual. How much tax they do pay is entirely based on how they choose to live their lives.

It turns the whole system around as we know it today. We are rewarding for spending today; under the Fairtax, we’ll be rewarded for saving and building jobs and the economy.

The FairTax is progressive, substantially lowering rates for lowest-spending Americans when compared to the current system, keeping them low through the critical lower-middle class range, and approaching the maximum, effective tax rates only for our biggest-spending wealthy. For a chart demonstrating this progressivity, use this link.

As to evasion, we are Americans, we hate taxes, and we have ingenuity to spare. We will cheat very successfully. However, with a 90-percent reduction in points of surveillance, record keeping, filing, compliance, and enforcement, when compared to the income tax system, the FairTax makes enforcement a relatively easy task.

Not to impugn the hard and successful work of the current state sales tax organizations, which have the option to collect the new federal tax. Their compliance statistics are much better today than the IRS’s. To aid these organizations further, a common federal base simplifies their collection of sales taxes incurred by Internet or catalog sales. And with some 90 percent of sales taxes collected by less than 10 percent of retailers, do you really think Cindy Consumer is going to charm Charlie Cashier at Wal-Mart into collusion to violate federal tax laws?

Imported goods pay the tax, so there is no advantage of cross- border transactions for law- abiding citizens, though the FairTax is no violation of our current trade treaties.

Finally, I’ve not touched on the job creation, financial services, charitable giving, and residential real estate boom, and robust, deficit-shrinking economy economists say the FairTax engenders. We in the grassroots certainly do need to drive our elected servants onto the FairTax legislation.

Newport Beach resident Peter Uberroth in 1984 was president of the Los Angeles U.S. Olympic Organizing Committee and and was named Times Man of the Year. He was also a major league baseball commissioner and a former candidate for governor of California. Visit the FairTax Web site at FairTax.org.

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.