100 years of the Income tax is enough!

If you are like most folks, on February 3, 2013, you were glued to your TV set, watching a great Super  Bowl.  Parties with friends, and rivals, across the land celebrated the game, whether your team won or lost.  And this was a good thing, because, if not for the Super Bowl, February 3, 2013 would have been a sad day indeed!!

It was the One Hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, which allowed the first constitutional income tax in our Nation’s history.  It was a horrible idea then, and was only passed because politicians in Washington promised it would only “tax the rich”.  And it is a horrible idea now. 

Our income tax code is too complicated for anyone, even our former Secretary of the Treasury who oversaw the IRS, to understand.  It is terribly inefficient, and forces hard working Americans to spend more than $450 billion dollars, and more than 6 billion man-hours, preparing and submitting their tax returns every year, taking money out of their pockets that could be used to feed their families, pay for their children’s education, or enjoy some of life’s luxuries. 

And it is unfair!!  Our progressive income tax code, sold on the promise of only taxing the wealthy, allows the wealthy to hire lobbyists to “buy” them special breaks and exemptions.  The payroll portion of the income tax is regressive, hitting the poor more severely than the wealthy, while it works to make those in poverty even poorer by discouraging work and killing entrepreneurship. 

February 3, 2013, except for the Super Bowl, should have been a day of weeping, with flags lowered to half-staff, and mournful dirges played on every radio station around the clock.  Politicians who supported the income tax in the past, and want to keep it in place for the future, should have been perp-walked through the streets before their public trials for lying to the American People.

We can’t change the past, but we can prevent the same misdeeds in the future.  We’ve lived with a horrible mistake for a hundred years, but we can make sure we don’t live with it for another hundred.  We can dump our current income tax and replace it with a rational, reasonable, and fair system of taxation that is what we all know it should be.  A system like the FairTax. 

Dan Pilla laid out some basic requirements in his essay Ten Principals of Federal Tax Policy published by the Heartland Institute.  Unlike our current income tax code, which fails miserably, the FairTax meets all his criteria,

1. Simplicity -- Citizens have a fundamental      right to know what tax laws require, and compliance should be easy and      inexpensive.
2. Noninvasiveness -- A minimally invasive tax code      encourages voluntary compliance and reduces the need for enforcement.
3. Efficiency -- The total cost of collecting taxes can be reduced by lowering the      number of collection points.
4. Stability -- The      tax code should be stable and reliable from year to year and generation to      generation.
5. Visibility -- The cost of government should be readily apparent to taxpayers.
6. Neutrality -- Taxes should not fall more heavily on one industry or class of      individuals than on others.
7. Economic Growth -- Taxes should not impede the investment and consumption decisions      that make economic growth possible.
8. Broad-based -- Broad tax bases allow rates to be kept low, which in turn      encourages voluntary compliance
9. Equality -- The      tax system should treat people equally and fairly.
10. Constitutionality -- Taxes must be imposed solely to fund clearly defined      constitutional functions.

We need to get rid of our current income tax code, and replace it with something that makes sense, the FairTax. 

We hope you will join us as we kick off our End the Income Tax campaign this year.  Now, more than ever, our Nation needs us.  Be a part of ending the travesty of our income tax, and creating a brighter future for our children with the FairTax.