Posted: May 31, 2005 By: Mike Dickson

Subject: Taxes?

Comment: The arrival of tax forms in the January mail signals that tax season has begun, but what if April 15 was just another beautiful spring day? If so, the IRS tax code would be gone.

In the late 70’s then President Jimmy Carter called the federal income tax system “a disgrace to the human race.” At that time, the tax code contained 23,000 pages. Today that number has grown to 46,000 pages.

Most agree that the income tax is unfair, complex and invasive, but what would be a better system?

In 1994 a group of business leaders, pondering the tax situation over lunch, decided to put up 1.5 million dollars of seed money to fund research and focus groups to answer this question.

They hired economists from some of the leading institutions including Harvard, MIT, the Argus Group and The National Bureau of Economic Research.

Their findings concluded that a system of taxation should be fair, visible, and easy to understand. The result was dubbed the “FairTax.” The FairTax Act (HR 25) is bipartisan legislation co-sponsored by Minnesota Democrat, Collin Peterson and Georgia Republican, John Linder. The bill currently before congress repeals all corporate and individual income taxes, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes and gift taxes.

In their place it imposes a revenue-neutral national retail sales tax on all new goods and services at the point of final purchase for consumption.

The bottom line: you would take home 100 percent of your paychecks, social security or pension checks.