Message to Gubernatorial Candidate Chris Daggett

Dear Mr. Daggett,
I am the State Volunteer Co-Director for the FairTax. While our organization does not support or endorse candidates (but we can educate our members and the public about candidates' positions), I was intrigued by your state tax proposal. Your proposal is a clear step in the direction of ours - the FairTax, HR25, S296, with 63 sponsors in the US Congress from both parties and growing popular support.

The Fair Tax is premised on the same macroeconomic theory as your proposal - it shifts the tax burden from productive sectors of the economy to consumption - without hurting consumption. But the FairTax goes further. It replaces income, payroll, estate, gift and generation-skipping taxation with a progressive national retail sales tax on all consumption, without exception, but once and only once. The FairTax features a family consumption allowance that makes it fair to low-income people. The FairTax jump-starts the American economy and is based on $23 million worth of research.

With the FairTax, Americans decide for themselves through their consumption choices, and not the IRS, how much tax they pay, and when they pay it. Americans take home their entire checks free of federal deductions and withholdings. Americans skip the April 15 filing date and instead "do their taxes" when they pay a bill or buy something in the store - and walk away from the mailbox and the cash register with no chance of an IRS audit because there is no IRS.

Although the FairTax is a federal tax proposal, there are serious efforts to implement it at the state level. In Missouri, the House of Representatives sent a proposed FairTax state constitutional amendment to the State Senate. If the Senate passes it, the measure will go to the voters next year and become the law of the state on January 1, 2012. South Carolina has introduced its own version of the FairTax in its legislature.

New Jersey could follow suit and transform its own economy with a state-level FairTax. I attach an article by economist and Professor David Tuerck. Tuerck proposes that New Jersey could replace its Personal Gross Income Tax, Corporate Business Tax, Transfer Inheritance Tax, Estate Tax and Sales & Use Tax with a state-version of a FairTax, WITH A FAMILY CONSUMPTION ALLOWANCE, at a rate of 5.52% - due to a larger FairTax base. See Table 3 Page 17 of the article.

For further information about the FairTax, please go to www.fairtax.org.

Whatever the outcome of this election, please advise me whether you could see yourself becoming a FairTax supporter.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
~Jim Bennett