October 13, 2005

To:
Connie Mack III
John Breaux
William Eldridge Frenzel
Elizabeth Garrett
Edward P. Lazear
Timothy J. Muris
James Michael Poterba
Charles O. Rossotti
Liz Ann Sonders

Dear Panel Members:

I have read the recommendations that your panel is expected to make concerning tax reform, and it looks to me like it is business as usual for taxes in our country. There doesn’t seem to be a move toward any tax reform, just more of the same. Tax the rich! You propose to punish the people who have made something from their lives to give to the people who choose to let us take care of them. 

My husband and I had nothing when we married. Over the years, we worked hard, both of us went to night school to get our college degrees, we built our own home and always paid our bills. When our children went to college, our income was just high enough to eliminate us from any college aid, so we both worked to get our boys the educations that we wanted them to have. They also took jobs during their college years because they believed in getting an education as well. Today, we no longer struggle, and we would be considered rich. But we earned it on our own. We pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps. Now you want to punish us by continuing the tax burden as it is and add to it by taking away our home mortgage interest deduction.

You have decided that the Fair Tax won’t work and you have taken it off the table. Are you crazy?! This is the one idea that finally taxes everyone fairly and puts meaning into “equal under the law”. With a national sales or consumption tax, we can be taxed based upon what we consume. Therefore, the rich will naturally pay more in taxes, especially since the poor would not pay anything after their monthly prebate, unless they too make a purchase that is not a basic need. That could happen because they will have more of their own money. Beyond that, we would finally see a vast underworld of citizens paying taxes and supporting our Social Security and Medicare that do not now support our government financially. I refer here to drug czars, illegal aliens and tax evaders, not to mention all of the foreign students and visitors that flood our country on a regular basis and take advantage of our educational system and jobs. 

A national sales tax will create an atmosphere that will encourage all of the companies that have gone offshore to avoid our excessive taxation to return home bringing jobs back to our citizens. Also, foreign companies will clamor to get into our country to take advantage of the tax shelters and the finest employee base on the face of the earth! Jobs will be created in every business, and manufacturing will return to our shores. Trillions of dollars will flood our economy strengthening our country financially. 

Your plan is the easy way out. Your idea of change is no change at all. It is just more of what we have been deal with for as long as I can remember. Your plan will protect the politicians and lobbyists, but there is nothing in it for the people who pay the bills. So what if your plan does away with the Alternative Minimum Tax! We are ready for a plan that gets rid of the income tax, death tax, Social Security tax and Medicare tax. That plan is The Fair Tax!

Your plan does nothing to: 
•	reduce the hideous tax compliance costs in this country 
•	bring American businesses back home along with the jobs that they took with them
•	bring back home the $10 trillion-plus U.S. dollars that are invested overseas
•	or allow us to invest with no tax consequences

Please do not think for one moment that your plan will cause informed Americans to roll over and play dead. No, friends, you will just make us more determined to voice our opinion further, longer and louder! We will be heard, if not by a tax commission, then through our vote!

Sincerely,

Marilyn Doll
Noblesville, IN