Question put forth about tax amnesty to get offshore money reinvested???

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Permalink Reply by Tony on July 22, 2009 at 7:47pm

Well if you owe back taxes the FairTax does nothing for you as you legitimately owe those taxes.

If you have funds overseas that you do not owe taxes on....you won't be taxed bringing them back into the US.
If you're hiding it offshore to avoid paying taxes on it...you're fine!
If you're hiding it offshore to avoid the funds being seized for taxes owed.....too bad!

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Permalink Reply by Randy Stone on July 22, 2009 at 8:52pm

Well put Tony!

I could not have explained it any better than that.

Fair Tax bill is not a complicated tax bill. It is really simple and we can take it, and not try to pick it apart trying to find loop holes that are not there!

Those who fling all the questions with such mis-trust are thinking this tax bill is like the one we have in place now! Full of loop holes and red tape!

It is a simple, & fair tax reform bill.

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Permalink Reply by Wayne J Glover on July 23, 2009 at 9:33pm

Analyzing is not tearing apart the bill. I was asked to look at these specific sections to see what I thought of them. Sometimes we cannot see the forest for the trees and it often takes other peoples input to clarify any mis understandings. I have been reading the bill and studying it because it is important that if a person is to support something they need to know what it says and what it means. Every bill needs to be studied to see if there are anythings that may be unclear. Some of the comment may not have been clear but it should not be criticized, it should be explained as you see it and it will help for us to spead the word about the FairTax.

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Permalink Reply by Jamie Wheeler WA on July 25, 2009 at 12:29am

Whether we are tearing it apart or analyzing it people have questions & thanks to the FairTaxNation we can have ligitiment discussion and answers. Beings we have been dooped WAYYYY too many times by those in DC it is pretty unnatural to think that the FairTax is not going to be looked at the same way.

We have been manipulated and dooped by the tax code and those in DC for too long. I for one like these kinds of questions because it challenges me on my knowledge of the bill. I did not pay that much attention to this part because it really doesn't affect me directly. If a person is doing something with the intent to "disobey the law" shouldn't that be accountable? (illegal immigrants...)

It is VERY easy to UNDERSTAND something from one's own perspective, but other people have their questions and concerns. Thanks for your input and the discussion! Honesty and READING THE BILL is a goal that is currently MISSING in DC!!

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Permalink Reply by Kerry D. Bowers on July 25, 2009 at 9:05pm

Hi Jamie,

To assist you with your understanding of sections 801-806 of H.R. 25, I want to point you to the "Plain English Version" of the Bill available at http://www.fairtax.org/PDF/PlainEnglishSummary_TheFairTaxAct2007.pdf . This particular document was produced for the 110th Congress version of the Bill, but it is still applicable. I know that Dr Karen Walby, board member of the Florida FairTax Educational Association and research contributor to AFFT, is in the process of updating the document and, hopefully, we will see that published very soon. Much of the subject section deals with financial services and the means by which those services will assess the FairTax. Those services today collect both explicit and implicit taxes as a means of paying taxes to the government as does any other comercial service provider. They also collect embedded taxes having the same hidden costs again as do other service providers. This section basically lays out how they will go about collecting taxes from customers under the FairTax.

In the case of "taxes due" the FairTax, to my understanding to date, does not offer an amnesty as you have addressed. This will not only be true for OFC accounts that may have taxes due, but it is also true for the last figure I have for pending tax litigation cases which was 31,452 and $21 Billion in dispute. This is why you see so many tax commercials on TV these days, because business is good for the tax attorneys and there is a lot of money to be had. The bottom line is that if you owe taxes now, you still owe those same taxes when the FairTax is enacted and litigation for them will no doubt continue for some time. The other term to consider is "tax defered" which is the case for IRAs and other similar tax defered accounts for which the tax due will be repealed under the FairTax. The reason given for this is that by not collecting all the tax due from these accounts when the change is made to the FairTax it will not upset the "revenue neutrality" of the FairTax. Those taxes are defered year-to-year and are not a part of the typical tax revenues collected in a single year, which will also be the case when the FairTax is implemented.

I hope to have been of some assistance and maybe pointed you to an answer source that will make better sense of the sections you find a bit more complex. Keep up the good work out there sharing the FairTax message!

Best Regards,
Kerry

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Permalink Reply by James Jones on July 28, 2009 at 1:46pm

I have heard several times that there is $13 trillion in US dollar denominated assets held in offshore accounts. (Or, alternatively, that US individuals and businesses hold $13 trillion abroad.)

I have been trying to verify this for some time, but have thus far been unsuccessful. Can anyone please provide me with a citation to a source that shows how that number was calculated?

Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Ramblin MO on August 1, 2009 at 8:17am

I would like to see the source for the thirteen trillion dollars also. Another question posed to me was. "If there is an embedded 22% tax on products purchased, where does the gain come from when discussing spending by illegal immigrants and tourists?"

Anyone? Thanks

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Permalink Reply by chiefcook on August 1, 2009 at 2:26pm

They do not qualify for the Prebate!

While the embedded costs of new goods is 22% of the price and the Fair Tax percentage is 23% they represent two different exposures. The Fair Tax is the actual amount of tax to the federal government. The embedded costs are not only tax dollars but also compliance costs (tax preparation fees, costs to accumuliate all the necessary information, costs to collect and forward taxes etc) and tax avoidance costs (lobbyist payments, financial manulipiation of funds etc) that the business incurrs during the course of the year. Everyone is paying these costs which makes the product cost more. By removing these costs, the price of the goods are much lower. It spreads the actual tax collection over a wider base of payees than the income tax payers. These individuals you are concerned about do not pay any personal income taxes in the USA.

Hopefully this will help shed some light on the concerns.

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