Huckabee Brings Some Attention to Fair Tax
Written by Sam on December 11th, 2007
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee’s rise to the top of Iowa polls has drawn attention to his embrace of a national retail sales tax. Backers of the concept call the former Arkansas governor a visionary; detractors call it unworkable.
Huckabee supports the FairTax, a national retail sales tax that his campaign Web site says would abolish the Internal Revenue Service, and federal income and payroll taxes.
“And I do mean all — personal, federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gain, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment,” Huckabee said on the site. “All our hours filling out forms, all our payments for help with those forms, all our shopping bags filled with disorganized receipts, all our headaches and heartburn from tax stress will vanish.”
Huckabee has really brought this bill a lot of exposure by getting behind it. I have very little expectation that this will ever see the light of day, but there’s nothing wrong with being a dreamer now and then.
11
PM
Agreed on both accounts–the fair tax doesn’t have a chance, but it is good to bring it into the light to talk about it. At the same time, it is also good that Thompson has brought the flat tax into the light. One major difference between the two is that the flat tax does have a chance to see the light of day–particularly because of the voluntary aspect that Fred has proposed.
12
AM
The flat tax has a stronger chance simply because it does not require tinkering with the Constitution, people are used to it in many states, and it is far more easier to implement.