Representative pushes for national sales tax

Published 11:00 pm Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The federal tax system is broken, says Mike Warlick, Georgia 9th Congressional District representative for Americans for Fair Taxation.

Warlick wants to replace the entire federal tax system with the “fair tax,” a national sales tax. He spoke on the topic Tuesday at a meeting of the noon Dalton Rotary Club.

Warlick said the current U.S. tax code is almost 17,000 pages long.

“And it changes every year,” he said.

“Is that something we really want to pass on to our children?” he asked.

Warlick said a 23-cent national sales tax on new goods and services for personal consumption could replace all federal taxes — income, estate, Social Security, Medicare and all the rest. It would remain revenue neutral, meaning the federal government would take in as much as it does now from all those various taxes.

Warlick admits that 23 cents sounds like a lot, but most Americans are now in the 15 percent income tax bracket and, in addition, pay 7.65 percent in payroll taxes.

He said the fair tax proposal calls for all American households to get a monthly “prebate” to help them buy necessities. The amount of the prebate would be the annual poverty level income, as determined by the federal government, multiplied by the fair tax rate and divided by 12.

Taxes on any item would be charged the first time it is sold, and never again. So those who buy, for instance, a used car or used house would not pay the sales tax. Sales of exported goods would also not be taxed.

Warlick said adopting the fair tax would increase economic growth in the United States.

“The fair tax will happen. It has got to happen,” he said.



For more information on the fair tax on the Web, go to www.fairtax.org.