If you think the Fair Tax proposal is a good idea, you may want to think again. In case you’re like many other Americans who try to block out what’s going on in the world around them, the Fair Tax proposal was first introduced in 2005, as a suggested means to overhaul the nation’s current income tax laws. Instead of paying income taxes to the federal government once a year, the Fair Tax proposes implementing a nation-wide sales tax, which would add 20-30% to the cost of products. Supposedly, this is a way of ensuring that those who don’t currently pay taxes would have to pay their fair share- but there is a flaw in this plan’s design. The Fair Tax proposal eliminates taxes on any income or property not earned or purchased- in other words, rich people who live off of an inheritance and receive houses and cars as “gifts” will no longer have to pay taxes for any of these things. The Fair Tax proposal claims to make everyone pay their “fair share,” but in reality it penalizes poor people for being poor, and provides the super-rich with huge tax cuts. How then, is this “fair?”
The simple answer is, it isn’t. People who live paycheck to paycheck and spend all of their income on basic necessities- rent, bills, food, toiletries, gas- will have 100% of their income taxed, as 100% of their income goes toward purchasing taxable goods. The super-rich, however, only spend a fraction of their income on these things, so only a small fraction of their income will be taxed. Sound fair? It’s not. Keep in mind that the working class Americans actually WORK for the money they’ve earned, while the super-rich were typically born into wealth and have never had to work a day in their lives (think Paris Hilton.) The Fair Tax proposal is not “fair” at all- in fact, it’s a scam that will keep the rich in power and make the poor even poorer. Why should we provide the super-rich with more tax breaks, while the poor and rapidly decreasing middle class gets flung into poverty?
