Rep. Chris Kelly has a version of the fair tax for Missouri. The basic idea is to move from taxes on income (you know, those nasty, cumbersome, overly-complicated forms, penalties, research, tax preparation software, attorneys, the gnashing of teeth, the wailing…?) to a sales tax on a broader base (you know, that thing you barely notice when you check out that’s completely automated and substantially less than the rate of your income tax?).
It’s being discussed today in the House Tax Reform Committee, and while the video I posted talks about a national tax, the results are ultimately the same on a state level: the fair tax on consumption is staggeringly easy to collect because it is an automatic part, already, of all payments. The fair tax is also –wait for it–fair! It has nonpartisan support from everyone except the Please Tax Me I Like It party, strange bunch, they.
It closes, once and for all, the tax loopholes that allow lobbied-for special interests to get massive breaks through income tax exemptions. It doesn’t devalue your day’s work. It allows frugal spenders to control their taxation. My boyfriend was asking “So, if you lived in a shack, grew your own food, slaughtered and prepared your own food, chopped wood for heat, lit candles in the evening…but you were a ga-billionaire, you’d never get taxed?” Yep! Not so with the income tax and other tangled webs. No matter how frugal you are, your tax rate doesn’t decrease…in fact, it can sometimes be higher than if you spent a lot on large items or business related items.
According to the Tax Foundation’s website:
“In 2008, Americans will work 74 days to afford their federal taxes and 39 more days to pay state and local taxes. Meanwhile, buying food requires 35 days of work, clothing 13 days, and housing 60 days. Other major categories are health and medical care (50 days), transportation (29 days), and recreation (21 days).”
So most of our efforts go toward taxation? Not life? I protest. And so does Chris Kelly. But there are some in the Tax Reform Committee that aren’t concerned with actual reform, like Jeannette Mott Oxford whose disappointing proposal I talked about last week, who is proposing a simple income redistribution scheme instead of supporting her colleague and fellow Dem Chris Kelly on a great proposal that makes sense, and is a good call on moral, good governance, fairness and economic grounds.
