Roanoke Area FairTax

Knight Kiplinger, Editor in Chief of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, lists a consumption tax as part of his article, “A New Economic Agenda,” in the November, 2008 issue. Under his list of America’s eight toughest economic problems, the top one is “Overconsumption and undersaving by individuals and the federal government, as evidenced by rising personal debt, budget deficits and the resulting dependence on foreign capital.”  His proposed solution:

“Reform the tax code. The best thing Washington could do to supercharge private savings would be to tax consumption rather than income. The Byzantine U.S. tax code (all 60,000 pages of it) should be scrapped. All present federal taxes — on personal and corporate income, capital gains, estates, even payroll taxes (FICA) — should be gradually replaced by a new, national consumer sales tax, collected by the states at the point of purchase and forwarded to Washington.

At every income level, big spenders would pay a lot of taxes, super savers much less. Poor people would get all their sales taxes rebated. (For more information on one version of a consumption tax, visit www.fairtax.org.)”

Read the entire article at: (http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/2008/11/knight_kiplinger.html?kipad_id=2).  It was brought to my attention by Ileada Ribble of Roanoke Area FairTax.