More On The Fair Tax

I wrote about the Fair Tax Act back in August and illustrated why I thought it was a bad idea. Since that time I’ve becomes solidly convinced that not only is it a very bad idea, but that it is extremely dangerous and needs to be firmly opposed. I don’t normally vote but if and when this becomes an issue I will go to the polls to shoot it down. Laurence M. Vance has written a devastating critique of the proposal over on Mises.org. Pay special attention to problems #7, 12, 13, and 17. The main reason for opposing the tax is that we should never give the government any new ways of taxing us. If we have learned anything from the last two hundred years of taxation, it should be that new kinds of tax will be added onto the old ones. They will not replace them.

In the comments thread linked to Vance’s article, there was an interesting comment by someone named Sasha Radeta. Speaking of the ills that will come with the Fair Tax he says, “I've seen this first hand in Serbia-Montenegro, Croatia, Bulgaria..., before they introduced [the] value-added-tax. Their governments' collection did not meet their projections and budgets. Meanwhile, black markets flourished, and they had to organize an inefficient, expensive oppressive, and enormous apparatus called [the] “financial police”. On the top of that, they never abolished [the] income tax, because [the] sales tax did not work.” Sounds like fun doesn’t it? If the Fair Tax Act passes we can most likely all look forward to the day when we can pay a huge national sales tax on all new goods and services after we have already had our paychecks plundered by the Income Tax.