The FairTax – third world county

June 19, 2008June 19, 2008

T-13; 2.X-repeat: 13 Things to Hate about the IRS

This is an easy one, except for the part about limiting it to thirteen things…

1. The taxpayer is always guilty until proven innocent.

2. Withholding. See #1 and add in, “Where’s the interest on the money stolen before it’s really due on April 15?”

3. The forms, the forms… *arrrrrggghhhh!*

4. About #3… I’m sure the IRS can make the print smaller and the paper of crappier rag, but I’m unsure whether they chose the ink for its ability to cause an allergic reaction leading to total mental breakdown or if that’s just a psycosomatic reaction…

5. “Advice” from the IRS. First, can ya think “Conflict of interest”? Then, go ahead: ask the same question of three (or four) folks with the IRS. You’ll probably recieve four (or five) contradictory answers, most of them designed to cause you to get a nastly letter down the pike from someone else (or sometimes the same dumbasses) saying you are in error for following their counsel. Catch 10648 (that’s Catch 22 cubed).

6. Following on 5, if the IRS makes a mistake, IT IS YOUR FAULT. Remember that one: IT IS ALWAYS YOUR FAULT. It’s a simple corrollary of number 1.

7. Paying the borg for the priviledge of being financially and mentally raped. Thank you, Mr. Revenooer… We pay the IRS’s wages, exhorbitant operating expenses (and screwups associated with “updating” the RS’s antiquated computer systems, etc.). So, naturally, as with other feddle gummint bureaucracies, those who pay the costs are the slaves of the servant. Figures. (See the Kipling cited in “Read more here” below *sigh*).

8. The lies I. The taxes you pay to the IRS on or before the April 15 deadline every year reflects your effective tax rate to the feddle gummint, right? Nope. That’s a baldfaced lie. You also pay ALL the taxes on ALL the goods and services (added up all down the supply chain to the end user/consumer) of ALL the businesses producing goods and services you purchase (on those goods and services you purchase). Your effective tax rate is really more like at least double what you see on April 15 every year.

9. The Lies II: Pictures like this at the smarmy IRS website:

Instead of the more honest:

10. The very thought of IRS drones feeding at the public trough. Just think: if even half of them worked at productive jobs instead (while the other half went on the public dole), we’d be far, far better off.

11. Tax courts. See #1 again.

12. Damned snoops! (And I think I may well be using the term with theological accuracy–*heh*) Even friends of tax collectors get their own place in Dante’s Inferno, IIRC…

13. The ultimate indignity: being forced, by a monstrous tax code, to pay one shark (or more!–tax lawyer, accountant, TurboTax *spit*, whomever) to snatch a small portion of one’s carcass from the jaws of a bigger shark.

I could rail all day, but then I’d probably be singled out (may well be already) for harrassment by the IRS.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Allie is Wired, Democrat=Socialist, CORSARI D’ITALIA, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Continue reading “T-13; 2.X-repeat: 13 Things to Hate about the IRS”

June 17, 2008June 17, 2008

Issues and Answers 1.02

Yesterday, I posted a video intro to The FairTax as an intro to the idea that real tax reform can have the single greatest ameliorative effect on our economic woes by introducing The FairTax. Today, part two:

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June 16, 2008June 16, 2008

Issues and Answers 1.01

Of the many issues facing citizens nowadays, it’s easy to say that the answer to “What’s toward the top of your current concerns?” would be “It’s the economy, stupid.”

And, beyond simple concerns about oil/gasoline proices and the closely related rise in costs of concumer goods, that’s a very good answer. But it’s important that we understand that our economic problems go far beyond percieved consumer pain caused by rising costs and relatively stagnant wages. Think of several even more important, deeply embedded issues:

The primary “weapon” with which the U.S. used to bring down the Soviet Union was to sucker the soviets into attempting to compete with our economy. And still today, our best largely unused weapon against enemies such as Islamic terrorism is our economy. That’s something even a noncom fighting in Afganistan recognizes (a long read, and the economic observations are buried well down, but a read wll worth your time. h.t. Rosenary’s Thoughts).

Suffice it to say, every effort made by our politicians *spit* to weaken our economy both in obvious ways and in obscure, structural ways, is working. The dollar is at its weakest in decades; our trade imbalance is growing; our indebtedness as a nation is worsening. What to do?

Let’s start with some common sense steps. Step number 1 (even more important than Drill Here-Drill Now): Embrace the FairTax.

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January 8, 2008January 8, 2008

Read the FairTax Book, Fred!

By now, both readers of twc *heh* know that I’m pretty much a “Fredhead”–that I believe Fred Thompson’s the only sane, adult human candidate running for the presidency. *heh* Yet still, there are a couple of things I’d certainly like to sit down and have a long discussion with him about, things I think he ought to address seriously in some way. One involves his reasoning for a couple of his senate votes. Oh, I understand his reasoning; I just disagree with him. The other is his inexplicable lack of support for the Fair Tax (and his own proposed tax plan).

Neal Boortz‘s article yesterday (January 7–by the time you read this, he may already have shifted it to his “archives” section, h.t., Hugh, a regular reader) touches on one of those things talking heads always–always–get wrong about the Fait Tax, either because they are too stupid to understand these things (or too lazy to do their homework) or because they have a specific agenda and are simply lying by omission or comission: imnedded taxes in the current plan and how the Fair Tax eliminates them. In yesterday’s article, Boortz takes one such Mass Media Podperson to task for getting this massive benefit wildly wrong… by simply not mentioning it.

There are several core principles of the FairTax, and one of them is that the new national retail sales tax will replace the federal taxes that are already embedded in the price of everything we buy. We didn’t make the embedded taxes up. The study was done by Harvard economists. I thought the left loved Harvard. These economists determined that, on the average, 22 percent of the cost of everything we buy represents the total embedded tax burden of every person or company responsible for bringing that product to the marketplace. Those taxes disappear under the FairTax, and when they disappear competitive marketplace pressures will drive that tax component out of the price. Then along comes the 23 percent FairTax to replace it. Result? The item costs pretty much the same. Now any reporter who wanted to do any research at all would be able to figure this out … yet Redburn makes absolutely no mention at all of embedded taxes in his article.

Why? Sloppy reporting? Or an agenda? This is a concept that hundreds of thousands of waiters and waitresses, truck drivers, construction workers, electricians, retail and service workers, farmers, hotel housekeepers and yes, even accountants understand .. but a New York Times reporter can’t?

But wait! There’s more! Redburn, of course, repeats all the fake talking points of Fair Tax opponents (except the political expediency talking point: the Fair Tax is gaining such broad based support that that lil point is starting to drop off the boards *heh*), including the old fake, “But most analysts say the tax rate necessary to replace current federal revenues, under any likely plan, would actually need to be much higher,” argument. The “most experts” referred to there are either the ones on or twice-removed, self-proclaimed “experts” citing the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, which was forbidden to review the Fair Tax plan! So, such “experts” are talking “peaches” to the Fair Tax “apples” and any observations they made/make are invalid, period.

Let me repeat myself: every single critic of the Fair Tax plan that I’ve read or heard has either lied or through a lack of actually doing their homework repeated the lies of others in their attacks. Kinda makes one wonder just what their agenda really is, eh?

Oh, it’s simple, really: any tax plan that deposes the political power of Washington politicians *spit* and bureaucraps to meddle in folks’ lives is anathema to these statists. The Fair TAx plan is the ONLY plan that’s been floated that

a. returns the Federal government to the consumption tax principles, though not the exact model, of the Framers
b. puts the power to actually pay taxes back in the hands of the ones who pay and
c. removes that bureau of Satan, the IRS, from the electorate’s back

Each of these things gives statists the willies, which is why, absent any substantive arguments against the Fair Tax, they lie.

*sigh*

But that still doesn’t adequately explain to me why–while not openly opposing it–Fred Thompson hasn’t jumped on the Fair Tax bandwagon with all he has… and that’s something I’d dearly like to have a sit-down with him about.

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