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.
Why? It marked the 100th anniversary of the Sixteenth Amendment's ratification, 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. That money taken out of their pockets could be used to feed families, pay for children’s education or enjoy some of life’s luxuries.
The income tax code is unfair. Our progressive income tax code, sold on the promise of taxing only the wealthy, allows the richest 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 working to make those in poverty even poorer, by discouraging work and killing entrepreneurship.
Except for the Super Bowl festivities, February 3, 2013 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 that supported the income tax in the past, and protect it now for the future, should have been perp-walked through the streets before their public trials for lying to the American People.
We cannot change the past, but we can prevent the same misdeeds in the future. We have lived with a horrible mistake for a hundred years, but we can make sure we do not 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 Fair Tax.
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 Fair Tax meets all his criteria -
- Simplicity -- Citizens have a fundamental right to know what tax laws require, and compliance should be easy and inexpensive.
- Noninvasiveness -- A minimally invasive tax code encourages voluntary compliance and reduces the need for enforcement.
- Efficiency -- The total cost of collecting taxes can be reduced by lowering the number of collection points.
- Stability -- The tax code should be stable and reliable from year to year and generation to generation.
- Visibility -- The cost of government should be readily apparent to taxpayers.
- Neutrality -- Taxes should not fall more heavily on one industry or class of individuals than on others.
- Economic Growth -- Taxes should not impede the investment and consumption decisions that make economic growth possible.
- Broad-based -- Broad tax bases allow rates to be kept low, which in turn encourages voluntary compliance
- Equality -- The tax system should treat people equally and fairly.
- 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 Fair Tax. We hope you will join us as we kick off our End the Income Tax campaign.
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 Fair Tax.
Marilyn Rickert is from Illinois and is President of Fair Tax Nation.
