Subject: Please select the FAIRTAX H.R. 25 proposal Comment: The reasons for this are: 1. As a society, we need to reward savings and discourage consumption. As Fed Chairman Greenspan and other prominent economists have said repeatedly, we cannot sustain the twin deficits. 2. We need to stop discouraging the production of goods and services here in the USA. Taxes on wages discourage employers from locating jobs here. 3. The imports taking away our jobs need to carry part of the tax burden. By taxing consumption instead of wages, the imports will beging to carry an equal portion of the burden. As a side effect, this will also discourage the use of imported goods and help reduce the trade deficit. 4. We need to start with a completely clean slate. A simplified income tax will just be corrupted back into multiple thousands of pages of incomprehensible legalese within a few years. A sales tax that applies to all consumer purchases is very simple. The novel rebate system included makes the system progressive rather than regressive like other sales tax systems. Sales tax enforcement is much easier to accomplish than income tax enforcement, and is already done by the vast majority of the states. This also ensures that the current underground economy will no longer escape paying taxes by failing to report income or overreporting deductions. When you buy something new, you pay the tax. 5. The only way we will ever be able to compete against foreign competition is with a level playing field. One component of this problem is taxation. By not charging businesses tax on inventory or wages, it will allow our exports to be produced and sold without any taxes included in the cost. As a result, our domestic producers will be better able to compete rather than needing to move their plants offshore in order to survive. Most of the countries we trade with already do this with sales and VAT taxes, and that's one of the reasons they have been able to annihalate our industries. For example, a Korean made TV costs $500 in Korea, but the exact same model of Korean made TV costs $200 here. The Koreans rebate the taxes back to the exporter and tack on a sales tax. The end result is that there are many jobs making TV's in Korea, and ZERO left here in the USA. Please do something positive for America by selecting and backing the bi-partisan FAIRTAX proposal. You are our nation's last hope. thanks for reading, Bob and Linda Currey |