Missouri House Approves State Fair Tax Constitutional Amendment

I've been a proponent of the FairTax for a few years now. My faith in the FairTax has never waivered nor will it anytime soon. Although many on the left (and a few on the right) have worked to discredit the idea of the FairTax over the past few years, the movement is gaining momentum.

The lastest victory come from Missouri where the House of Representatives voted to approve of a state Constitutional Amendment that would give Missouri a state-level FairTax.

From Fair Tax Nation:

In a development of potential national significance, the Missouri House of Representatives, on April 16, 2009, sent a proposed amendment to the Missouri Constitution, HJR36, to the state Senate that, if enacted, would bring a state-level Fair Tax to Missouri. The sponsor of the bill, Edgar G. Emery (R-Missouri District 126, Lamar), advised me yesterday he thinks the bill has a reasonable chance of passage in the state Senate. There is no definite time table yet there - the resolution has had its first reading. However the passage of the proposal in the state House has enhanced the profile of the bill in the state Senate. If the state Senate approves, the measure will be submitted to the voters of the State in November 2010 without need for consideration by the Governor. If approved by the voters, the measure would take effect on January 1, 2012, and Missouri would become the first laboratory in the United States - and perhaps the world - to test the macro-economic benefits of the Fair Tax. New Jersey FairTax State Co-Director, engineer and business owner, Norm Simms, has stated frequently that his decisions on where to site production are sensitive to tax climate. If the state FairTax passes, businesses would be expected to seriously consider locating - or relocating - to Missouri. Credit for the success of this bill goes to the Missouri FairTax volunteeers.

You can access Missouri HJR36 on-line here:

Missouri HJR36

There have been many efforts at tax reform over the past twenty years, but all of them failed to produce the desired results. Here are three end-goals that any tax reform plan must have in order to be viable:

1) The plan must remove from the IRS any power to intrude on the private lives of American citizens.
2) The plan must remove from the K Street lobbyists any power to influence Congressional votes.
3) The plan must not allow hidden taxes to be passed along to the consumer at any time.

There is only one tax reform plan that addresses all three of these end-goals:

THE FAIR TAX


Americans For Fair Taxation

Even the IRS Can See The Double Standard On Enforcement Of The Tax Code

Fiscal responsibility is one reason why we should be supporting all of the Tea Parites being held today. But personal responsibility isn't very far down the list of reasons to do so.

Tom Hamburger and Ralph Vartabedian of the Chicago Tribune have this to say:

The Treasury secretary, who oversees the IRS, didn't pay all his taxes. Neither did five other top nominees for the Obama administration, or their spouses. Now, as Wednesday's tax deadline looms, some Americans are wondering why they should comply with the arcane requirements of the Internal Revenue Service when top administration officials failed to do the same. Even some IRS employees are upset at what they see as a double standard. ... "Our members are upset and angry," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, referring to concern bubbling up within the IRS over unusually strict rules that can cost agents their jobs if they make a mistake. In some cases, IRS employees have lost jobs for simply filing a late return or failing to report a few hundred dollars of interest income.

And yet, people like Timothy Geithner got rubberstamped right through the Senate. Do you believe you would get such gentle treatment if you failed to pay your taxes the way Geithner failed to do so?

Probably not:

Robert Schriebman, a California tax lawyer who has testified before Congress, said his clients are seething over the tough treatment they get from the IRS, while some in the president's Cabinet apparently were able to duck paying their taxes. "Politically powerful people are less likely to get bothered by the IRS," Schriebman said. "It is more than a question of fairness. Not only is the IRS looking away from confronting influential people, the IRS is getting a lot tougher and nastier toward the little guy."

Which is one of several reasons why we need to scrap the current tax code and replace it with the Fair Tax as well as getting rid of the IRS altogether.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

IRS Workers See Double Standard On Tax Errors
Tom Hamburger and Ralph Vartabedian
Tribune Newspapers
April 15, 2009

Convert Paulson's Last $350 Billion Into A Tax Holiday

I had always entertained the thought that a President who wanted to drum up support for the FairTax could have easily done so by granting a period of Tax Amnesty (Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution) during which no one would have to pay any Federal taxes. It would be a small taste of what effect the FairTax would have on the national economy and when people see how relieving so much economic pressure would allow such a huge economic boom to occur, they would be writing letters to Congress urging the passage of HR 25 and S 1025.

Louie Gohmert has a similar idea except that he is going to try and push it through Congress. Not an easy task since the Democrats control both houses and the idea of not collecting taxes is a concept they seem completely incapable of grasping. But a two-month Tax Holiday would be exactly like having the FairTax for that same time period and it would more than jump-start our economy.

From a November 28, 2008 Press Release:

By instating a temporary tax holiday, we could electrify the American economy and provide overwhelming relief to taxpayers, all for less than the cost of the current failed Paulson-Pelosi bailout system." "We need to give this money to the people who earned it. I am sick of Washington millionaires trying to decide which of their cronies should get the next wad of taxpayer money," Rep. Louie Gohmert continued. "Think about how much you would have if you didn't have any social security or income tax withheld from your pay check, or if you didn't have to pay those taxes for January and February! Americans could take and invest their own money where they believe it should go - to paying down mortgages, buying a new car, making credit card payments. The economy would get relief where it is needed the most. Why try to decide how to prevent foreclosures? Just give taxpayers their own money to catch up on their payments. Those in lower income brackets who are hit the hardest by the FICA tax would see huge money back, and then THEY could choose who should benefit from their hard earned money. Even the self-employed and small business owners would receive a fantastic amount of their own much-needed money, and they will be able to invest that back into their businesses and even create the ability to hire more people.” Gohmert is currently preparing a bill to declare the tax holiday for January and February of 2009 and is also gathering support at the same time. He said, “We can save more home mortgages, increase employment, and boost economic growth for a lower price tag with this plan than with any centralized bureaucratic program, all by giving the power back to the taxpayers. I am demanding that not another penny goes to executive bailouts, but these billions of taxpayer dollars should go to the taxpayers who earned them."

You can support the Tax Holiday by going to the following link and signing the petition:

Sign The Tax Holiday Petition!

You can access the original Press Release on-line here:

Convert Paulson's Last $350 Billion Into Tax Holiday, Says U.S. Congressman
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)
November 28, 2008

Congress Fiddles While The Economy Burns

Got this in my email from FairTax.org. Read it. It's good:

Dear FairTax supporters, Our cause continues to gather steam in hometown America—while, with smoke in the air, Congress fiddles. Could it be more obvious that we will have to save the nation from our own elected officials and candidates? Retirement investments, savings and college education accounts are evaporating as the stock market falls—while at the same time leading economists predict that trillions of dollars can and will flow into the United States economy after enactment of the FairTax. Candidate Obama signals a desire to raise the amount of money the government takes from the growth of savings and investments while the country has the lowest savings rate since the Great Depression. With gasoline, food prices and inflation rapidly escalating and housing values falling, former Senator and John McCain economic adviser, Phil Gramm, says we’re all just a nation of “whiners” and the economy is really just fine. Candidate McCain has changed his earlier Iowa tune and now tells audiences that the FairTax is not the answer. Congress and the White House borrow $165 billion from other nations to finance taxpayer rebate checks to stimulate the American economy and ignore the wasted $265 billion annual cost of citizens and businesses preparing income tax returns. Meanwhile, the powerful Chairman of the House Committee on Ways & Means, Charles Rangel, practices politics as usual and solicits big business for big contributions to his Charles Rangel Center in New York City—and with a wink and a nod Washington adds more loopholes and tax gimmicks for favored interests. The United Nations concluded this week that three-quarters of the reason for higher food prices can be traced back to turning agriculture to bio-fuel production—here in the U.S. it is another recent ham-handed tax break by the meddling Ways & Means Committee. While leaders ignore the crisis, citizens work for a FairTax solution While "leaders" turn a deaf ear to our destructive tax system or offer medicine that will worsen the economic downturn, hometown America is quietly and steadily moving us toward the FairTax. Hundreds of people recently turned out for a FairTax seminar in Georgia designed to equip average citizens with the means to spread the word to fellow Americans and wake up elected officials. The Postal Workers Union is considering embracing the FairTax at its national convention. In Oklahoma, all but one member of the Congressional delegation have co-sponsored FairTax legislation because of the determined and relentless work of local advocates. A documentary team from Georgia is traveling the nation recording the determined but under-financed FairTax movement. XM Satellite Radio just featured FairTax.org on "Open Road," Channel 171, heard across the country and a favorite of long-haul truckers. Host Dave Nemo enthusiastically added the FairTax web link to his home page. Other radio hosts from Michigan, Virginia, California, Florida, Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere and the always popular Neal Boortz and Herman Cain continue to support the issue with their audiences. Candidates for Congress in West Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Arizona and elsewhere have embraced the FairTax. At kitchen tables across the country FairTaxers are finding their own ways to push the movement--from YouTube and MySpace videos to letters to the editor to friendly conversations with neighbors. Keep the faith—and keep the FairTax movement growing! It's our nation and we'll have to save it from the original bad idea of an income tax that just keeps getting worse at the hands of tax lobbyists and the corrupted Congressional tax writing process. Now is the time for all citizens to band together and make the case for the FairTax. Tell your newspaper editor, tell your elected officials and tell your friends, neighbors and colleagues. Our country, our children and our future depend on this common sense solution—and it could not be more needed than right now. For every FairTaxer who writes a letter to Congress, goes to a Town Hall meeting, talks with a candidate, writes to the local newspaper, wears the FairTax cap or proudly displays the FairTax window sticker—thank you! For those who feel that someone else will get it done—wake up and smell the coffee because this lifeboat needs your oar. Our progress is slow but steady. Recruit one more FairTaxer and move us forward one more step at a time. Together we can make it come true. Sincerely, Ken Hoagland Communications Director

Nothing Is Certain But Death And The FairTax by Dr. Mike Adams

The movement is growing! Despite what naysayers and negativists are parroting in their misguided criticisms about the FairTax, this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue and soon, Congress and the American people are going to have to seriously study and consider it.

Read what Dr. Mike Adams has to say in his latest column from TownHall.com:

The idea comes to me from a former student who was waiting on me the other night at the bar of a seafood restaurant in Wilmington. I had a beer in one hand and my copy of FairTax: The Truth in the other when an Obama supporter asked the following: “Why do you support the FairTax? We just need to change the tax code to punish corporations that are sending our jobs over to China.” Armed with FairTax: The Truth, I responded with the following: “I’m from Texas as is Representative Bill Archer. He testified in front of Congress about the results of an interesting study of 500 companies in Japan. When asked what they would do if the U.S. abolished its present tax system and went with a consumption tax, 80% said they would build their next plant in America. The remaining 20% said they would relocate to America altogether. Now that’s change you can believe in!”

Yes, it is. But I still find it amazing that there are educated people out there who still believe that a more punishing tax code will bring jobs back to the U.S. You might as well believe that more anti-semitic laws would have brought more Jews back to Nazi Germeny.

And how does it compare to the proposed Flat Tax? Dr. Adams looked at that too in another conversation:

Supporter of the Flat Tax of Yesterday (SOFTY): Sorry, I support the flat tax. Adams: How often do you change your underwear? SOFTY: What? Adams: I assume you change your underwear every day? SOFTY: Yes, what the hell does that have to do with it? Adams: That means you’ve changed underwear 8036 times in the last 22 years. SOFTY: And? Adams: And the I.R.S. has changed the tax code 16,000 times in the last 22 years. They change the tax code twice as often as you change underwear. How long do you think a flat tax would remain flat? SOFTY: (Silence) Adams: Would you like to borrow my book?

While the Flat Tax is far superior to what we have now, I don't believe it goes far enough in addressing the issues that our income tax system has produced.

What does the FairTax do? It replaces the entire Federal Tax Code with one simple, easy to understand and completely visible national sales tax on new goods and services. No more income tax, no more hidden taxes, no more death tax, no more any tax on personal wealth or income.

The FairTax:

• Enables workers to keep their entire paycheck
  
• Enables retirees to keep their entire pension
  
• Refunds in advance the tax on purchases of basic necessities
  
• Allows American products to compete fairly
  
• Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
  
• Ensures Social Security and Medicare funding
  
• Closes all loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
  
• Abolishes the IRS
  

Additionally, the FairTax is the only Tax Reform plan that addresses the three following end-goals:

1) The plan must remove from the IRS any power to intrude on the private lives of American citizens.
2) The plan must remove from the K Street lobbyists any power to influence Congressional votes.
3) The plan must not allow hidden taxes to be passed along to the consumer at any time.



You can access Dr. Adams' complete column online here:

Nothing Is Certain But Death And The FairTax
Dr. Mike Adams
TownHall.com
May 12, 2008

Star Parker Supports The FairTax!

Yes! As time goes on we see more and more people coming over to support the FairTax as a viable replacement for our convoluted, often contradictory and wasteful current Tax Code. From Star Parker's latest column:

Economists can argue cause and effect. I'll just point out that as soon as we enacted the income tax, growth of the federal government took off and outstripped state and local spending as the major tax burden on citizens. The income tax, with its 45,000 pages of tax code, is now simply a sandbox for politicians and lobbyists to play in. This is what we should focus on in all the discussion about special interests, lobbyist influence and runaway growth in government. With a national retail sales tax to finance government, the tax burden on citizens would be totally transparent. Whenever you make a purchase and look at the sales slip, you'd see the 23 percent tax and know that's what you are paying for the federal government and its programs. When a Sen. Smith or a Congressman Jones shepherds some new program through Congress and the president signs it into law -- ka-ching! -- we'd immediately see it at the cash register. When you ask the cashier why you are now paying 24 percent instead of 23 percent, he or she can explain that you are paying for some wonderful new government program.

Just imagine how people will get motivated to stand up to politicians in D.C. if they could see first hand how playing political games affects the American consumer.

Star goes on:

Most of those 45,000 pages of the tax code reflect special treatments and deductions for businesses, particular types of investment, or behavior. This stuff got in there and regularly gets modified and changed as a result of various special interests working their magic. The number of registered lobbyists in Washington doubled over the last eight years from 17,000 to over 34,000. A good chunk of their business is generated by proposed additions or changes to the tax code. If you listen to Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, with all the talk of reducing lobbyists' influence, most of their pitch is using the tax code for their social engineering programs. I say get rid of the code, the Internal Revenue Service and the lobbyists.

Absolutely! As I have written several time before, the FairTax is the only Tax Reform Plan that that addresses three end-goals:

1) The plan must remove from the IRS any power to intrude on the private lives of American citizens.
2) The plan must remove from the K Street lobbyists any power to influence Congressional votes.
3) The plan must not allow hidden taxes to be passed along to the consumer at any time.

And this:

Ironically, the major reason why the national retail sales tax gets so little attention is because insiders deem it politically impossible to achieve. Those who are part of the problem don't want the solution. The tax code is now one huge special-interest honey pot and the swarming bees want to keep it that way.

Yep. Which is why we need to keep growing our grass-roots movement until it become a juggernaut that no politician, Dem or GOP, can ignore.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

A 'Yes, We Can' Plan With Beef
Star Parker
TownHall.com
February 25, 2008







Petition For The FairTax

The FairTax Can Fix The Recession

A good, short essay about how the FairTax would fix the recession we are sliding into right now. Full text here:

Instead of borrowing money from China to pay a "rebate" to American taxpayers, the FairTax makes America THE "offshore" investment magnet for the world. We have lost more than 12 trillion dollars of American capital to offshore locations in recent years. That money, jobs and a whole lot more capital will flow here when we have eliminated the corporate income tax, capital gains taxes and personal income taxes. And as long as we're counting wasted money, tax preparations, hours spent on returns, tax lawyers and accountants cost our economy $265 billion annually. To that figure add the $350 billion the income tax system comes up short on taxes owed every year. My goodness, that wasted money is coming close to the size of a stimulus package. Our tax system is damaging the American economy because the tax writing process is not about the economy--or taxpayers. It is all about Members of Congress having the power to reward friends and contributors, punish opponents and inept attempts to manipulate citizen behavior through the tax code. Add to that the profit motive of of thousands of tax lobbyists and you end up with 67,500 pages of tax regulations and a system that rewards debt over wealth, encourages cheating and mistakes, and has enough gimmicks to feed an army of academicians, tax lawyers and lobbyists who study the arcania. For Pete's sake, we've turned the CPA profession into seeing eye dogs leading us through the maze of tax regulations instead of a profession skilled at helping us grow our savings and investments. Can the American people escape being victimized by the self-interest of Congress and force enactment of the FairTax? The question is really whether the citizenry can still direct the government, as the Founding Fathers envisioned. In this, the FairTax idea, now widely distorted by those who profit from the income tax system, is more than a better tax system--it is a test of whether our form of Democracy still works hundreds of years after our first tax revolution. Ken Hoagland FairTax National Communications Director

You can access the original essay on-line here:

The FairTax Fixes The Recession
Ken Hoagland
FairTax.org
January 31, 2008

Petition For The FairTax

Well, Super Tuesday is here. 22 states will be voting in their primary elections. I am hoping that John McCain will not get the GOP nod.

But we'll know more about that tonight. For today, we have a petition to sign in favor of the FairTax. From Congressman John Linder's website:

Message to the House of Representatives: I am tired of worrying about confusing tax forms and stacks of tattered receipts, and frustrated that our tax code continues to undermine our nation’s values of saving and investment. I want to be a “Citizen Co-Sponsor” of the FairTax — legislation that will create a national retail sales tax to replace all income taxes, payroll taxes, and estate taxes, and eliminate the need for the Internal Revenue Service entirely. The FairTax would revolutionize our economy. Without the income tax’s stifling impediment to growth, Americans will be able to save more, and businesses will be able to invest more. Individuals will have incentives to engage in capital formation - the real source of job creation and innovation - more than ever before. Businesses will have incentives to direct large amounts of capital back into the United States. I want you to know that I am enthusiastic about this bill and its prospects for success, and I want all of our Representatives to join us in this fight. I endorse the FairTax and I want you to help make April 15th just another spring day.

Please help us get rid of the ridiculous, intrusive, convoluted and often contradictory tax code we have and help us shut down the IRS. Visit the following website to sign the petition:

Petition For The FairTax
JohnLinder.com
Copyright 2007

My wife owns a small business here in Northern Virginia and I own the building it operates in. Every January is a new set of headaches in getting our tax records straight just to send them to an accountant!

Think I'm kidding? Just check out the 2008 Publication 15 Circular "E" Employer's Tax Guide from the IRS and see how difficult it is to follow the damn thing. And that is just for the employees' wages. Other forms are needed for product sales and services provided by the business. And then there's property taxes, business taxes and others as well.

The FairTax is the only solution that relieves small businesses of the undue burden placed on them.