In fact, to provide a counterpoint to all I’ve said, TennZen posted this link after all the Tea Partying.

People always find loopholes.

@Apollo — “Grocery items” is a wide net, and opens the same debate as the “income” question, which allows lobbyists and corruption. It’s far simpler to have a standard sales tax. In fact, on that note, I double checked my facts because I knew I was mixing up something crucial. I realized the Fair Tax does not exempt necessities, but provides for a monthly “prebate” check for the necessities of life. The argument for this is this ensures that the Fair Tax is progressive. The wealthy would actually get a disproportionate rebate if grocery items were exempt, since the rich spend a greater amount of money on food. The prebate check actually allows the standard tax rate under the Fair Tax to be much lower for everyone than it would by exempting grocery or medical items. I’m going to go back and correct that part of that paragraph right away.

@Chris — You didn’t ask me any questions, so I’ll just say, “Right on.” (We need to do some huge firing of Alabama legislators, while we’re at it. WOW. I know I’ve mentioned how sad it is that the Free the Hops movement gives me the best information about what’s going on in our legislature.)

@LightBringer — In general, the cost of goods would go down for everyone because corporations always pass their tax burdens onto their customers anyway. Corporate taxation is a smoke and mirror game to make people think that big companies are paying their fair share, but really, as taxes and compliance costs go up for corporations, so do the prices of their goods, or else they lower their labor costs. In the long run, individuals always pay taxes. The free market would settle those artificially high prices down. Prices in the US market, would be much more competitive, even with the sales tax. This lowered cost would especially be shown in US goods, since foreign goods would not have that edge. In this way, the Fair Tax even works towards tackling our trade deficit. Smuggling goods into the country would simply cost more than actually buying them at home in most instances.

From the FairTax website FAQ:

What about border issues?

It is unlikely that “shopping across the border” in Canada or Mexico will result in any cost savings to the consumer. Remember, the FairTax is revenue neutral and therefore price neutral. This means the relative cost of retail goods and services after the FairTax remains very close to the same levels found in the marketplace today. With regard to interstate competition, since all states have the same federal sales tax rate, the federal sales tax is not an incentive to cross state lines to avoid the tax.

Oh, as I was making sure all my ducks were in a row on this, I ran across another favorite bit of the Fair Tax for me… our current income tax doesn’t catch some of our biggest money makers at all. Crime lords would suddenly find themselves paying taxes, too.

I hate that word. Won’t is more applicable.

My question Apollo would then be, if small changes are manageable and easier to regulate, why are we still complaining about loopholes?

Chris the only problem with being able to fire the representative that doesn’t do as they promised, is that we can’t. By time the next election comes up people have forgotten what made them mad, or what promise was broken.

My only real issue with the Fair tax comes from the fact that it’s on purchases/merchandise. What’s to stop a wealthier individual from making purchases outside the US, and bringing them back. Has that issue been addressed? I don’t remember seeing/hearing that topic being addressed.

It’s sometimes a partisan issue. Dems don’t like Reps and like to lump anyone even close the other camp’s water cooler in with them. Sometimes the partisanship actually amounts to a disagreement with the ideology behind the party, but it’s usually just a shouting match.

It’s too often an “us versus them” mentality. It’s “We the People”, not “We The folks that have to deal with those People who got elected.” We’re the government, responsible for putting individuals into the legislature et al., and we’re responsible for calling them to task. Did your senator not do what he stumped? Fire him, and hire someone who will do what he says.

I think what it really boils down to is that there is an underlying status quo, a solid bedrock of cultural security in our country that gives us cause to grouse about unfair things are, but when push comes to shove, not do anything about those unfair things. Why? Well, to put it bluntly, we’re afraid. What happens when, if we demand change, that change actually happens? What if the change we demanded was actually wrong? What if it means that the bedrock shakes? We’re security-minded, and driven by fear of change. Our public servants know this and exploit it as a matter of practice.

When we talk about something like the tax code, you can’t find a taxpayer who says, “What’s wrong with the tax code? Looks fine to me”, and yet the code grows each year. With each level of bureaucracy come another way to grift. Yes, we do indeed have a country that has a very complex infrastructure. No, it is not impossible to change that infrastructure. I argue that the two alternatives presented by LG show initiative to not only embrace positive change, but also to directly address something with which taxpayers agree; the current system does not work, we need something better.

I’d prefer being taxed on my purchases rather on my wages, so I like the FairTax, personally, but I can see the Flat Tax’s merit. Perhaps there are other ideas out there that would be a useful alternative to what we have now?

Also, on a slightly different note, Alabama is one of the only states in the nation that still taxes grocery items. How do you feel about that?