Clarification of Tax Objectives

I did nto see this post, but I will reply shortly. Hwoever, until then, a sbrief comment.

You wrote:

8. Respect privacy and civil rights. Andrew and I disagree here. The income tax is intrusive and abusive requiring a running tally of all sources of income. There is no requirement in the FairTax to report detail of all purchases to the taxing agency (only monthly totals). A key problem with the IRS is that we are presumed guilty with the burden of proof on us. A reformed tax system should presume innocence with the burden on the government to prove otherwise.

I argue that you are looking at the system from the perspective of an employee only, and forgetting thsoe business owners who will still have an onerous intrusive system forced ont hem, and will still be guilty until proven innocent. You are taking a myopic focus and not seeing the negatives of the FairTax due to that.

Any tax system, short of capitation taxes is intrusive of necessity. It is simply a question of who gets the burden. By focusing solely on wages and employees, you miss the intrusive part of the FairTax, which is every bit as intrusive as the income tax and more.

Well, I will reply properly on my blog shortly.

I was amused at your replies to my concern over funding levels and trade. In funding levels you said it was unrealistic to cut spending, yet in trade you adopt the unrealistic view of thumbing our nose at the WTO.

WTO concerns are very real in today's environment. If you want to get out of the WTO, fine by me, I would prefer simple bilateral open trade agreements, but as you said about revenue levels, that would take a long fight. So we have to consider the WTO in our talk of trade, and slapping an additional tariff to bring the effective rate up to 30% (as tariffs are calculated, being equivalent to what FairTax folk call 23% embedded), would bring WTO sanctions.

If we are being realistic and dealing with conditions as they exist, all that talk of sovereignty is nice, but when you can't sell anything overseas because of WTO sanctions, the talk won't really help much.

Either we are being realistic or idealistic, you can't have it both ways.