Rant on.

Election day is fast approaching, and with it comes stupidity heaped upon stupidity.  For example, there is the Fair Tax Act, an act I think is a very good idea.  Sadly, the Democratic party seems to be opposed to it.  I can’t figure out why, but I would like to.  They’re using some Republicans’ support of the concept as a smear, doing the usual politician lie and mislead things in ads which reference the act.

I first caught onto this from an ad (can’t recall if it was on the TV or radio) which was against a Republican candidate.   The ad stated the act would ad a twenty-three percent sales tax to everything, which is true.  Then the ad said the act would give tax breaks to the wealthy, which is misleading at best and, in my opinion, flat out wrong.  The ad also stated that people would lose land-based tax deductions.  Technically, this is true, but only because there would be no income tax to deduct from.

You see, it’s like this:  The Fair Tax Act, if it managed to get passed, would eliminate the IRS and the complex and horribly corrupt income tax system the U.S. now has in place and replace it with the above-mentioned national sales tax.  This means taxed goods cost more, but paychecks will be considerably higher because no taxes will be taken out.  Imagine that:  Getting paid what you earned.

How does this affect the wealthy?  Well, just like the rest of us they would pay that twenty-three percent tax on goods.  As the wealthy tends to purchase more stuff, they would contribute more to the tax base than the poor who buy less.  Also, as currently proposed, there would be exemptions and reductions in that sales tax percent, but not for the wealthy.  The breaks would be for the poor, not the rich.

There’s another hot benefit from going to a national sales tax.  There are two groups of people who currently do not contribute to the tax base from their earnings:  Illegal immigrants and those earning money from criminal work.  Think about that for a moment.  Illegal immigrants don’t pay income tax because that would require calling attention to their unlawful presence in the country.  Thieves, drug dealers, gun smugglers, etc., make a living from incomes which also do not get reported.  With a national sales tax, however, these two groups would suddenly be contributing to the tax base every time they made a purchase.

This, to me, is a fairly liberal idea.  And yet the Democrats are opposed to it.  I have visited a few campaign sites and found attacks on a few Republican candidates’ support of the concept.  As I said, it baffles me.

So if you are reading this and are as liberal as I am, please encourage your local candidate, Republican or Democrat, to support this idea.  The IRS has had its day, served its function, etc., but the time is last past to replace it with something a little more sane.  Yeah, that’s an odd statement coming from me, which hopefully (for those who know me) says just how serious I am about this.  It’s time for a Fair Tax.

Rant off.