Replace All Federal Taxes on Income with the Fair Tax Act , HR 25 and S 122

Proposed 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: The Fair Tax Amendment

How does this sound for a draft of the 28th Amendment to the Constitution?

Judge Deborah’s Proposed Fair Tax Amendment

Proposed Twenty-Eighth Amendment

Section 1. The sixteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2. The direct taxation of any corporation, small business, farming operation or private enterprise is hereby prohibited.

Section 3. The direct taxation of any private citizen’s wages or earnings by Congress is hereby prohibited. Income taxes, payroll taxes, alternative minimum taxes, estate taxes, death taxes, gift taxes, corporate taxes and capital gains taxes are hereby abolished.

Section 4. A federal retail sales tax shall be instituted on the consumption of goods and services in the United States once, without exception, but only once.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. This Amendment will take effect within ninety (90) days after passage of Fair Tax legislation by Congress.

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H.R. 25: “A resolution to promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity by repealing the income tax and other taxes, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national sales tax to be administered primarily by the States.”

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-25

Also see S. 296 – Senate Version of the Fair Tax Act of 2009.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-296

Now all you attorneys, advocates and activists have something to work on!

Feel free to take this humble legal secretary's work and refine it, but don't change it too much!

We like HR 25 just like it is!

P.S. -- I think the actual Fair Tax legislation outlines whether we have 6 months or 2 years to fully comply with this law. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

Tags: Amendment, Fair, Tax, Twenty-Eighth, business, corporation, small

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Permalink Reply by Pat Conroy on March 25, 2009 at 6:24pm

Stew, you are correct about the way the bill reads. I think perhaps a 3rd front might be needed. One of the objections to a constitutional convention called by the states is that there may not be a way to guarantee the convention isn't opened to other issues. However, the pressure would build on Congress to do something as the number of states calling for a convention got close to the magic 34.

I look at a Senate or House resolution to repeal the 16th amendment as another arrow in our quiver. Regardless of the way it is accomplished, the bill must still be passed and the 16th amendment must still be repealed.

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Permalink Reply by Fla Vol on March 25, 2009 at 8:34pm

Pat,
Thanks for reviewing comment. I agree with you that some other items might come into the convention and that is why I feel strongly about a coalition that can influence the state legislatures to call for a constitutional convention with specific instructions to approve certain amendments. If we go to the states where we have the most strength and get the first few to approve the call for a convention then it should be easier to get the others to follow the same pattern. Once that pattern or agenda is designated it will be hard to pass something that is not in agreement because that state would be left out. You must have about 43 states all asking for a convention for the same purpose. I am not sure of this but I do not think items outside of the states approval would be approved.
The coalition will police this. We need to find 3 or 4 groups who are strong, that we can live with and they are not opposed to the Fair Tax. With the right groups, working in friendly states I believe we could get this train moving.
Opposition can come from those who are professional association managers. Once we accomplish the task their work ends. If you do not get my drift I will explain it. Fortunately this site is comprised of folks who want to get it done. Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Deborah in Ohio on March 26, 2009 at 3:22pm

A limited Constitutional Convention would be restricted to revising only the areas of the current constitution named in the convention's call, the legal mandate establishing the convention. See Constitutional convention (political meeting) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=168221

The best thing we can do is elect a lot of Republicans who are for the Fair Tax in 2009 and 2010.

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Permalink Reply by Sean Fagan on April 18, 2009 at 8:26am

Deborah, from your souce: "...In the case of the Philadelphia Convention, delegates met for the "sole purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation." George Washington was elected president of this convention. Once the body convened, meeting and deliberations were conducted in secrecy with James Madison serving as recorder. It was rapidly decided that the body would ignore the limitations of its call and propose the replacement of the Articles with an entirely new basic instrument of government."

This really concerns me - What would prevent this from happening again?

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Permalink Reply by Carol Carr on April 15, 2009 at 10:10am

Deborah, Can you please start working on an amendment to the constitution to limit term limit's for congress? You know it will pass with flying colors. 2 terms, and no golden parachute for them to live off our tax dollars for the rest of their lives and limit their compensation to 40,000 dollars a year.
Can this be done?

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Permalink Reply by Deborah in Ohio on April 18, 2009 at 7:57am

Gov. Huckabee is all for term limits for Congress, just like the president has. That would have to be a grassroots effort from the people, because otherwise, Congress would never call a convention to get it done. These Tea Parties may produce the steam to get something like this done, but Gary Bauer told me it takes a lot of grassroots energy to do something like this, because Constitutional Conventions take a lot of work and are very rare and difficult to accomplish because they take the teamwork of our elected officials.

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Permalink Reply by Ron Woodward on April 15, 2009 at 1:04pm

Deborah, I like the amendment and we need it to be as iron clad as possible to prevent the same type of tweaking of the code that has led to the current 60,000 pages of impossible to understand tax code. We need to restrict the application of the tax so that their is only one rate applied to all goods and services. No groups or entities can be excluded. The current wording would allow multiple rates for different products and different groups of consumers. Governments could have a zero rate, Power boats could be a different rate than potatoes. If we do not want lobbyists to get control again we need (paraphrasing from "Lord of The Rings") One FairTax to tax us all, One FairTax to fund them, One FairTax rate to charge us all and in the Congress rule them.

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Permalink Reply by Deborah in Ohio on April 16, 2009 at 12:30pm

Ron, I'm not sure we nail down all the details in an Amendment to the Constitution, but that might be something to work on. It is important to have the Fair Tax (House Resolution 25) enacted exactly as it is written with very little changes.

It sounds like you are concerned that Congress could tinker with the FairTax from year to year and try to change it. Unfortunately, there would still be 132 pages of Tax Code (reduced from over 70,000 pages) that could still be changed.

But then it would no longer be the FAIR Tax. We need to let Congress know that we will accept no exceptions. I'm not sure if we even need a tax exemption for College Tuition. The Fair Tax calls that investment rather than service, but if we're not going to exempt grocery store sales, why exempt school? On the other hand, if we exempt College Tuition, then we should also exempt Private Elementary and Secondary School Tuition also.

We apparently have a few kinks to work out. No legislation is perfect. But the simpler, the better. The most important thing is that we predicate passage of the FairTax on the condition that the 16th Amendment (The Income Tax) will be repealed.

We certainly don't want to be double or triple taxed any more.

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Permalink Reply by Joshua on April 16, 2009 at 1:09pm

I agree with exempting education. My one fear about the FairTax is congress will still try to determine winners and losers by eneacting more excise taxes on certain items, creating a double-tax on those items. I think the fairtax should repeal articles D, E, and F of US code 26. We could put that in the amendment, and prohibit fees in commercial services.

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Permalink Reply by Deborah in Ohio on April 16, 2009 at 3:31pm

It's probably a good idea to enact the FairTax exactly as written, since leading economists have diligently researched and found the best features that make the program simple and fair. We just need to listen to the FairTax videos over and over until we can convincingly sell the idea of the FairTax.

As far as U.S. IRS Code 26, I think we should throw out the whole thing (Articles A-K). Why should the IRS have anything to do with coal industry health benefits? I suppose we'll have to tackle part of the IRS code and then go after another part later. I just don't understand why a rogue agency should have the authority to enforce codes (which aren't even written in the law) like they're a Wild West version of the FBI.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Tomasik on April 16, 2009 at 3:38pm

I do not agree with exempting anything. Someone else will come along and say we should exempt socks for kittens next.

Absolutely NO exemptions.

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Permalink Reply by Margaret Grindrod on April 16, 2009 at 11:51pm

I think the only problem I have with the amendment is there is not percentage mentioned. Does this not leave the door open for one to say, "Okay, we'll institute the tax once and only once, for 90%."? Or am I reading this wrong?