Thursday, February 03, 2005

Feed the Poor: Tax Reform for Working Americans

Picture this: to help the plight of Americans in poverty, we eliminate all federal payroll taxes, replace them with a federal retail sales tax and exempt low income people from paying the sales tax. Our poorest citizens would truly be removed from the tax rolls. Further, we eliminate all income taxes to prevent Corporate America from passing along their taxes in regressive fashion to those least able to afford it. So the poor will have higher take-home pay and lower prices on all goods and services.
On top of all this, there are benefits even for the heartless Republicans. All federal income taxes of every kind will be abolished because we will repeal the 16th amendment. No Death Tax, no Capital Gains taxes, no Interest income taxes. All gone. And by getting rid of the need to pass along income taxes to consumers and by making the billions of dollars that we spend on compliance with the Tax Code we will make the economy more efficient and make our exports more competitive. This Tax Reform will be a jobs producing machine. Sounds like something liberals and conservatives alike could get behind, doesn't it?
But they can't.
A Republican Congressman from Georgia introduced it so the Democrats feel like they have to be against it.
What a shame.