Great Tax Article from Neal Boortz

Today's Nuze
Friday -- April 15, 2005 TAX DAY
WISE WORDS FROM A FORMER IRS COMMISSIONER
What better day than Tax Day to bring you some words of wisdom from a former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service:
"Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.
The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.
The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.
The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die.
As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.
The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men.
I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves..."
T. Coleman Andrews. Andrews Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service for three years, from 1953 until 1955.
Now ... with those words in mind, let's move on ......
TODAY'S THE DAY
Twenty-seven hours. That's the revised figure on just how long the average person in this country spends filling out their tax return this year. That's three working days. What do you make a day? Two hundred bucks? So, if your time is worth about $200 a day that would mean that you can add $600 to your tax bill ... $600 being just part of your cost of compliance with the Internal Revenue Code. Add to that any other expenses you incur for record keeping and tax management during the year ... and it adds up. What's the total nationwide cost? Try $500 billion, and that estimate might be low. But that's money. You can't really get a grip on $500 billion ... so let's try to put it in terms of people. It takes people to do the bookkeeping, maintain the records, and fill out the forms that are necessary for tax compliance on both the personal and business level. How many people? You'll be shocked to learn that tax compliance in the U.S. takes the combined work effort of about 2,700,000 people working eight-hour days five days a week just to make sure that individuals and corporations comply with out tax laws. What a hideous and unforgivable waste of human potential.
There is a way to spend zero hours a year preparing your federal income taxes. It's called the FairTax. You would pay taxes only when you spent money and never have a dime withheld from your paycheck. The rate would be 23% and would be reduced to 15.6% after your rebate for necessities.Just imagine...no IRS, no forms to fill out and no tax day. April 15th would just be like any other Spring day.
I've been spending my "spare" time the last few days doing the final edit on The FairTax book before it heads to the publisher. I'm lovin' it. As you'll read in a moment, The FairTax has found some new momentum with a ringing endorsement from a letter to Washington policymakers from 75 economists. Add these voices to Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman and others ..... and we're looking at a something more than a legislative pipe dream.
Speaking of editing ... perhaps this would be a good time for a tease. Here is a short excerpt from the book, taken from a chapter on the history of our federal income tax. The class warfare and wealth envy aspects of the federal income tax are nothing new ... they were there from the very beginning. Isn't it time for a system of funding our federal government that isn't based on class envy?
[Excerpt from "The FairTax Saying Goodbye to the IRS and the Federal Income Tax", soon to be published by Regan Books.]
Now here's where things get really depressing. After the idea of an income tax was declared to be unconstitutional the politicians in Washington chose sides and drew their battle lines. On the one side we had Democrats who were eager to spend the money that would come from an income tax. The Democrats included a platform calling for such a constitutional amendment permitting the income tax in both their 1896 and 1908 platforms. Republicans were opposed.
Those who favored the income tax scheme met with considerable success in capturing public sentiment with promises that the tax would "soak the rich" and would leave the vast majority of Americans alone. Wealth envy was every bit as alive and well in the early 1900s as it is in the early 2000s.
The history timeline now brings us to Texas Senator Joseph Bailey, a conservative Democrat, who cooked up a scheme to humiliate congressional Republicans. Bailey introduced a bill calling for an income tax. Even though Bailey himself was opposed to an income tax, he thought that the Republicans would rush in to kill this legislation. This would further the image that Democrats were trying to cultivate of Republicans as hostile to the poor and concerned only about protecting the wealthy. Wouldn't you know it; things didn't turn out as Bailey had planned. Liberal Republicans, backed by Teddy Roosevelt, came out in support of the bill. Passage seemed all but certain.
Conservative Republicans needed a way to derail the Bailey Bill and the growing threat of an income tax. In one of the worst examples of legislative play-calling in the history of our Republic, Republicans came up with the brilliant idea of announcing that they would support the idea of an income tax, but only if that income tax came about as the result of an amendment to our constitution. This group of conservative Republicans felt that while there might be some chance the proposed amendment would actually make it through the House and the Senate, there was just no way in the world that the legislatures of three-fourths of the states would vote for ratification and make it a part of our Constitution.
Oops.
Sail through the House and the Senate the amendment did. The vote in the Senate was 77-0 and the House approved it by 318-14. It was off to the states for ratification. Conservative Republicans were certain that the effort was doomed. They were wrong.
Democrats launched a massive effort to convince the people that any income tax would only be directed at the wealthy, and that ordinary Americans would be left unscathed. Conservative legislatures in the West and the South convinced their constituents that the adoption of the income tax would have little effect on them, since incomes high enough to be taxed were rare in these areas. The people, thus anesthetized, raised little objection and the 16th Amendment was ratified on February 12, 1913 . This date should be added to December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 as dates in American history that shall forever live in infamy.
The FairTax (c) 2005 John Linder & Neal Boortz
GOOD NEWS FOR THE FAIRTAX
As I said, there is good news for the idea of replacing our income tax with a consumption tax. A letter signed by more that 75 economists has been delivered to the House, Senate, Treasury tax reform panel and to President Bush. Copies of the letter have also been sent to virtually every tax policy maker on Capitol Hill. The letter praises the FairTax plan. Click here to read a copy of the letter [pdf] ... complete with the name of every economist including one Nobel Prize winner, who signed on. The FairTax plan is viable, my friends, and it can become law. If the people of this country get behind the plan it can become law. Reforming our tax system is nothing compared with what a small number of Americans did over 250 years ago.
Congressman John Linder will join Neal at 10:30am ET to discuss the Fair Tax and take your callsI want to address negativism here. I've been talking up the idea of a national retail sales tax for nearly 20 years on talk radio. Things are different now. Now people hear my words and recognize that this might actually become a reality. Most listeners are thrilled ... but there seems to be a class of listener, or caller if you will, who feel compelled somehow to come up with a reason why this just won't work. As soon as the FairTax topic comes up on the show callers get in line to give me all of the reasons why the plan is going to fail. There's nothing new in these ideas. They generally focus on the idea that people will try to get around the tax by operating underground. What's new about that? The underground economy is alive and well today under the income tax! This idea isn't perfect! No idea is! But it is certainly one helluva lot better than what we have going now.
Our society has always had its share of people who are eager to come up with a reason why something can't be done. Thankfully we've also always had a good number of people who chose to spend their time trying to figure out how to make ideas work. These are the innovators whose combined efforts have brought us the incredible standard of living we enjoy today, and who have made America the destination of choice for people around the world who want a better life.
The FairTax will undoubtedly come up again today on the show. After all, it's Tax Day. And the nay-sayers will be there ... ready to tell us why this idea won't fly. That link above will display a letter that shows you you're wrong.
Let's get it done.

It's Tax Day!!!

Okay everyone, time to get out those checkbooks and give more money to Uncle Scam. I really have no faith in the Federal Government, even though I think those working for it mean well. My money is hard earned, and i don't like parting with it for foolish reasons. This is where the FairTax plan comes in.
There is a bill in both the House and the Senate, HR25 and S25 respectively, that would eliminate the IRS. This is not a joke and is currently endorsed by over 100 leading U.S. economists, including a Nobel Prize winner. It would create a 23% national sales tax and eliminate all write offs and deductions that the current system uses to play the role of Robin Hood. There would be a rebate on all money spent at the poverty level to every citizen, meaning that until you make more than $17,000 a year, you would pay no taxes. The more you spend, the more you pay, but you keep 100% of your paycheck. Social Security is already funded with general revenue, so nothing would change there. The interesting part of all this is that approximately 22% of the cost of manufactured goods goes toward taxes and tax compliance. That means the real effect of the tax would be 1%, and you would be able to use all of your paycheck to cover it. This would also mean that U.S. companies manufacturing goods marketable overseas, would be able to drop their prices by an average of 22%, making them extremely competitive in the global marketplace. The number of manufacturing jobs would increase dramatically buy all forcasts, and everyone would be paying their fair share. I could go on for hours, but it would be best if you visited www.fairtax.org to learn more about the plan and to see charts on how it would effect you.

front of tub in Mom's bathroom