Tax Reform Group Blasts Presidential Tax Panel
A new press release from AFFT:
HOUSTON, Oct. 18 /U.S. Newswire/ — Americans for Fair Taxation today blasted the Presidential Panel tasked with proposing fundamental changes to the tax system as engaging in, “Fraudulent political theater designed to protect the corrupt tax code and those who profit from its manipulation,” said Leo Linbeck, chairman of the national grassroots organization. “When a Presidential Panel engages in such activities it does a great disservice to the American people.”
“Far from making suggestions for fundamental reform, this Panel has actually suggested making the code more complex, more intrusive and more harmful to the economy and the well being of American citizens,” said Linbeck.
“The Panel has thrown up a smokescreen with a fake consumption tax program, continued tinkering with the code at the cost of health care benefits for American workers and recommended a scheme to punish homeowners in high cost areas of the nation in an attempt to solve the problems created by another lobbyist driven reform which gave us the Alternative Minimum Tax. In addition, the Panel wants to enlist credit card companies to monitor spending of Americans and report their findings to the IRS,” said Linbeck.
“The fact that the main proposals to emerge are limits on health insurance and mortgage interest deductions is nothing more than the usual Washington mindset of how to more efficiently shear the taxpaying sheep,” said Linbeck. “We can only hope that media representatives will take a closer look at the profit and political motives that lead some on this Panel to protect the lobbyist-driven federal tax code.”
“We must have hit a nerve with our growing grassroots demand for a national retail sales tax because the panel ignored our multi-million dollar research effort defining the proposed plan and instead invented their own phony and flawed national sales tax program and then found it wanting. The Panel went to great lengths to conceal the substance of the FairTax proposal,” said Linbeck. “The FairTax deserves a fair hearing. Instead, the Panel was driven by the very Washington insiders and tax lobbyists who now profit so handsomely through manipulation of the tax code to distort our thoroughly researched proposal. ”
“While every American knows perfectly well that well-heeled lobbyists are manipulating the federal tax code for profit, this Panel somehow ignored that reality and substituted politics-as- usual for strong action. In the process they employed limited findings and dishonest analyses and let down the American people, as well as President Bush,” said Linbeck.
“It is painfully obvious that Washington, D.C. insiders so closely linked with the status quo cannot be trusted to overturn the corrupt system of federal taxation. This effort will have to be driven by the American people,” said Linbeck.
I propose an Alternative Maximum Tax. Number crunchers calculate yearly the median effective federal tax rate of a government employee earning (or spending, under a consumption tax) the national median income (spending). This rate then becomes the maximum effective tax rate for all taxpayers at or below the median income (spending). Millions of Americans will save billions of dollars which are currently being redistributed upward through the tax code.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article orm Group Blasts Presidential Tax Panel :: The Fair Tax Blog, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.