Walter Williams weighs in on the The Fair Tax in this column. While we have a course in income tax, I advise you to skip it and spend more time on accounting, You can learn tax more easily by buying the $15 Arthur Young Paperback on preparing your taxes at Hastings or B & N. Still, taxes are synonymous with CPAs, so the Fair Tax and our horrible income tax system is something you need to understand. Yet the time and money spent preparing tax returns is a huge waste of time and money, prepare tax returns for a while and you will see what I mean, I did for over twenty years.
The Fair Tax is a proposal to junk the entire existing system and replace it with a national sales tax, that way everyone is actually subject to the same thing. While Williams does not mention it, there are rebates and exclusions so the tax is not paid on basic purchases. Williams has three important requirements but still thinks it will never pass. Why, well the same reason the Chinese Communists hold on to communism knowing capitalism creates more wealth. Ah, but communism creates more power, for the rulers. And our tax system creates more dispensable power (read contribute to my campaign) than a sales tax.
It is an abomination. If a potential candidate for President would seize on abolishing the Income Tax, that campaign would move front and center. But don’t expect it from the Dems with their class warfare ideas, and the Republicans had over a dozen years and they produced nothing, sigh……
Professor Elam 
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