Clarity — Thanks for your civil reply. Here’s my quick responses:
1. Look at William Gale’s analysis of the FairTax in the May 15, 2005 ed. of Tax Notes, published three months before The FairTax Book came out. It is an analysis of the FairTax as written. Both the FairTax Book and the recent book ignore it. (When forced to acknowledge the Gale study, Boortz simply lies and says it is not the FairTax.)
2. If taxes are eliminated on the poor and slashed on the wealthy and high-income families, the tax burden of the middle class must increase. (Boortz will claim the money will come from illegal aliens and the underground economy, but if you actually run the numbers you will see the money is just not there.)
3. I certainly agree there is a difference between high income and wealth, and I also agree the upper middle-class and high income earners get screwed under our current tax code. But to think that the FairTax is going to tax wealth is simply wrong. In the first place, the FairTax eliminates the estate tax, which is the only tax we currently have on wealth. Second, the truly wealthy do not spend their principal on what would be taxable goods and services, at most they spend their interest, dividends and capital gains. So the vast bulk of their wealth will never be taxed under the FairTax, but will simply grow untaxed in perpetuity.
