Liberty Maven

As a former proponent of the FairTax I researched with great interest whether Ron Paul supported it or not. During one of the first television interviews of his Presidential campaign he was asked about supporting it. His answer was that he’d vote for it, but would not sponsor it. He is against taxes on principle, he said. I was happy that he said he’d vote for it, but annoyed that he wouldn’t sign on as a co-sponsor.

Since then I’ve come to rethink and research the FairTax and I am now in alignment with Ron Paul’s position. Today the Mises Institute released a daily article on the FairTax by Laurence Vance. It is more than an article. It is a book review of the latest FairTax book by Neil Boortz, a major proponent of the tax. It is also more than just a book review, it is a meaty treatise on why the FairTax may not be so fair after all.

As a critic of the national retail sales tax plan known as the FairTax, I take Neal Boortz’s new book on the FairTax very personally. The book is titled FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics. It is intended to be a sequel to The FairTax Book, published in 2005, that offers “eye-opening new insights not covered in the original book.”

Boortz is right. There are some eye-opening new insights unique to this sequel. Like the disclosure that you might “owe more in taxes in the first year of a FairTax system than you do today.”[1] Or the admission that “the FairTax could be even more progressive than our current system.”[2] Or the confession that the “implementation of the FairTax doesn’t mean complete annihilation of the IRS.”[3] Or the proposal that “a procedure should be set up in the Treasury Department to collect taxes on Internet and catalog sales, remitting the state and local governments’ share to them.”[4]

Finish reading “There Is Still No Such Thing As a Fair Tax” by Laurence M. Vance.