Subject: Replace Income Tax with National Sales Tax Comment: I strongly advocate a total repeal of the absolutely crazy & convoluted US income tax code that so heavily weighs on US productivity and savings. It is a system that causes nothing but angst, huge amounts of wasted time, and ridiculously expensive compliance expenses. It drastically interferes with the honest and proper governing process that should be taking place in our Capitol; instead, it seems our governance revolves around the manipulation of ‘tax policies’, ‘social engineering’, and the marginalization of the individual American citizen taxpayers by ‘special interests’ and hordes of ‘lobbyists’ from all manner of private and public organizations – both international and domestic. It appears so starkly obvious that our whole income tax code should be immediately and totally replaced by a simple flat across-the-board retail sales tax, that I cannot comprehend how anyone could be opposed to such a change – unless of course their occupation and/or political philosophy is dependent upon the present income tax system. Sales tax collection mechanisms are already in place and well-established in most US states; so it would cause very little (if any) extra burden on businesses. In fact, releasing businesses and individuals from the existing onerous burden of income tax paperwork and recordkeeping could only result in a huge net reduction in administrative costs and nonproductive time. Arguments that a national sales tax system would interfere with state and local sales tax collection revenue streams are totally incorrect and misleading. Plenty of state and local tax jurisdictions depend upon established state and local income tax revenue streams, which certainly don’t appear to be adversely impacted by the presence of a parallel federal income tax collection system. If all of the complications and administrative time and cost burdens connected with income tax code compliance and maintaining income tax-related records, reporting, and payroll withholding systems were completely eliminated (i.e., removing the necessity for all of the tax lawyers, tax accountants, payroll income tax withholding calculations and recordkeeping, IRS bureaucratic overhead, hordes of lobbyists leading our government astray, lost productivity, income tax system software, books, paper records storage facilities, reduced savings motivation, etc.) and the income tax code totally replaced by a simple point of sale retail sales tax on ALL goods and services (a framework which is already well-established in most states here in the US), I feel quite confident that the result would be little, if any, change in total prices paid for goods & services. In fact, there would likely be a reduction in costs of goods and services, even with the sales tax included. Replacing the federal income tax code with a national sales tax system would most certainly initiate an immediate and significant across-the-board increase in everyone’s ‘take home pay'. Scrapping the income tax would result in a huge boost in our individual and collective national productivity, free time, savings, and our international economic competitiveness. The cost of labor in this country would immediately become much more competitive with other countries economies – especially where head-to-head labor competition takes place based upon total employment costs (e.g. the international maritime trade industry), including workers’ income tax burdens. Productivity and savings would be rewarded, boosting our economy and lowering financing rates. The burden of supporting our newly streamlined government would be fairly shared by everyone, including an added income stream from the purchases of goods and services by the millions of foreign tourists and other foreign visitors to our country. An important additional benefit of a national sales tax would be that it could provide a simple and equitable solution to properly funding our ‘social security’ system costs. A flat across-the-board social security benefit could be provided to everyone when they reach retirement age, funded by a percentage of the national retail sales tax proceeds. Such funding would not be an onerous burden to any segment of society. If the same flat social security benefit amount would be provided to all retirees, based upon a minimum ‘above-the-poverty-level’ calculation – it would provide the lowest paid citizens with a comfortable retirement. Those earning a higher pay rate over the years would receive the same financial benefit level as everyone else, which if added to their own private retirement savings, should allow them to maintain a retirement reasonably comparable to their pre-retirement lifestyle. Motivation and ability for significant individual citizens’ savings are much more likely under a national sales tax system than under our income tax system. Every year Congress promises to do something about the "income tax code problem", and every year nothing meaningful is ever accomplished to rid ourselves of this heavy anchor dragging down our individual and national collective productivity and attitudes towards our government. Please actually do something right about this issue - permanently eliminate the income tax code and its attendant problems during this session of Congress. Hopefully the majority of Members in Congress will do what is honest and right for the American taxpayers paying our country’s bills - ignore the 'social engineers' and ‘special interests’ lobbyists and quickly pass a national consumption / retail sales tax to completely replace all income taxes at the federal level. Since the 2003-2004 session of Congress, there has been an apparently well-planned and potentially very effective fair and simple tax program bottled-up in Congress. It's called the "Fair Tax Act" (H.R. 25), introduced by Congressman John Linder - a Republican from Georgia. This is the most comprehensive, fair, and practical potential replacement for our current income tax code that I have heard of to-date. I suggest Congressman Linder’s bill be seriously considered as an excellent model upon which to base a new national sales tax regime to replace our current crazy income tax system. Bottom line – we need to completely replace our federal (and states’) income tax systems with a fair and flat across the board retail level consumption tax! Thank you for the opportunity to present my (admittedly strong) opinion concerning this issue. |