The price will not come down 22% due to no corporate tax. Corporations are taxed on net profits after expenses, not on gross income or the retail prices of the goods and services they provide. Such profits are typically less than 10% of the final retail price, so the price might come down 2%, not 22%. And the 23% Fair Tax rate is misleading, your "Joe Six Pack" currently sees state sales taxes added to the retail price of every taxable item he purchases, and certainly will be "mad as all get out" if he finds out that the 23% rate he was promised turns out to be 30% on his sales receipt.

It is 23% and not misleading. The 30% that use is what is used by the left and the congressmen and women to scare the people without giving them the whole story. The retail price overall comes down 22% due to no corporate tax. Then that figure 23% is added to it resulting the same retail price. Let's not forget that no money would be withheld from one's paycheck and FICA taxes would be a thing of the past. Add that to the Fair Tax rebate and Joe Six Pack will have a nice bump in pay plus he won't have to figure out his taxes each year saving him time or the money that he would have to pay to get it done. Kick in the probable boost in income due to a more vibrant economy and Joe Six Pack will be much better off. He will mad as all get out if he ever learns the truth.

The Fair tax was born out of a business meeting in Houston. 3 wealthy guys figured out that they spent 75% of their board room time in deciding whether or not an idea meant sense tax-wise. They put $21 million dollars for economist at MIT and Harvard to come up with a way to collect taxes that was neither a tax increase or a decrease. They expected the thing that they would come up with would be a flat tax but to their surprise it was the Fair Tax method of a sales tax. In the revenue that the government had received for the previous 16 quarters the Fair Tax would actually collected more taxes due to everyone was paying taxes, i.e., drug dealers, hookers, etc. The thing that I like about it is that on each receipt that you get is a breakdown of the taxes that are being sent to the government. This alone would make more people aware of the ridiculous amount of money that each of us is sending to DC. Pressure would then come from the people to lower taxes. K Street would be out of business as there would be no more tax goodies to dole out to a senator's favorite donor i.e. graft.

Let's not forget the economy being helped substantially by the Fair Tax in no manufactured goods being taxed. This would cause a tremendous increase in exports and more jobs. The Fair Tax folks took a survey of the largest 400 companies outside of the US and their finding were, 240 would build their next plant here and the remaining 160 would move their corporate headquarters here. A boon for jobs and wealth.

With the Fair Tax you would be an amount for a family of two ( unless there are other people living in your house) up to the poverty level for a rebate of all the money that you spend. It's much better than what we have now.

A version of the Fair Tax, I could go for this.

Your scenario is perfection which will not happen in step 1.

You do not understand the economics. Repeating promotional slogans is not helpful.

It is not a "voluntary" tax. You have the choice of how much to either earn or consume. "Voluntarily" arranging your life to reduce taxes does not make taxes voluntary. Production without the ability to use it for your own consumption is meaningless. The purpose of production is for your own life, not as an end in itself.

I've had my share of gaffs in the Gulch also.

there is no "fair tax"....all taxation is theft...citizen contributions to govt should be voluntary...that quickly determines what govt is necessary...

I agree! that is a strong argument for the Fair Tax. The problem as I see it, our abomination of a Tax Code is job security for 100's of thousands tax lawyers, accountants and various other "Tax Preparation" support people. The lobby is extremely strong and well entrenched! I would love to see a real debate on this however. Let's see which "clowns" cling to our current Socialist (or worse) tax scheme!

Thanks, dino, I needed that ;^)

A fair tax will replace personal income tax. You will take home your entire paycheck. A fair tax makes it unnecessary for the government to have knowledge and control over your personal business. A fair tax will abolish the IRS.
A fair tax will make imported goods cost more than goods manufactured here in the US. This is because the cost of income tax for the employees and the companies is simply added to the cost of the products. This cost will be eliminated resulting in a reduction of 25-30% in the cost of US manufactured goods. Meanwhile imported goods will be more expensive because a 35% tariff will be added to their cost.
A fair tax will be great for our economy.
Also A Galt's Gulch-like community can exist where neighbors reduce their use of money by self-sufficiency and bartering.

You have me wrong. I'm just asking, and trying not to ask leading questions. It would be too easy for me to say, "I assume you believe road-building should be an entirely private affair." And mentioned police, military, and judiciary.

We can agree as regards modes of communication, transport, and shipment. I would point out that duties and imposts still fall under the broad category of "taxes," so they are "voluntary" only in that one need not import anything if one wishes to avoid such payments.

Residential and industrial users of streets can form associations to pay to keep them up. Storekeepers can likewise pay to keep up the roads that bring their customers to their own markets. Highway owners can charge tolls. And anyone who runs a firm that insures property can run a fire brigade to provide direct management of risk.

Likewise, litigants, registrants, and other users of the courts can pay fees for whatever services they require. This can include "requests for judicial intervention" to certify the results of arbitrations.

But what incentive has anyone to pay for the police or the military? How does one keep order in a society, the membership of which is not "by invitation only"?

Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged did not advocate letting the system destroy itself into chaos. Ayn Rand repeatedly urged maintaining civilization and advocating the right philosophical ideas required to change the course of the country. Saying "no" and "resisting" does nothing to achieve positive change.

This scheme is not a means to "zero taxes". In the usual conservative fashion, it's a gimmick ignoring the principles required to be established for a free society while doing nothing to lower taxes and spending. There are no shortcuts. This shell game is the same anti-intellectual wishful thinking as Trump idolatry.

Juli; I understand and sympathize with your frustration and your desire to DO something to try to achieve a change, to attempt to reverse the problems. But most people seem to miss the sub-plot and maybe main point of Atlas Shrugged, or think of it just as fiction. Attempting to work with or within the system won't work. The most accomplishment with such an effort is the destruction of oneself or help the system exist a little longer. You must let it fail--let it eat itself, and at the same time do your best to protect yourself during the chaos. We don't have and won't have a physical Gulch to escape to--we won't find a savior--nor will there be a set of magic legislation.

But what we do have is a philosophy of reality as it is and a mind that can logically, rationally think about the world we live in and assess and determine what we should and shouldn't do in order to survive and improve our lives. Compromising with the wrong/evil/anti-human system only leaves one with no principles, and weakened morality.
'
If this sounds severe, that's life and that's reality. That's how we've wound up in the situation we find ourselves in today. Want to change it, stand up and say NO. Exercise your Right of Resistance. That's what the Declaration of Independence and the 2nd Amendment is all about.
'

If anyone thinks that we can go from our current system of taxation to zero they are not thinking rationally. I agree with the premiss that we should have no taxes but that and pat on the back will get you nowhere. The Fair Tax can work to our advantage if we promote the hidden tax which is now hidden and bring it out into the open. On each retail receipt there will be an accounting of the taxes. When people see the tax and we yell loud enough seeing this tax maybe just maybe we can start whittling away at the tax monster. The good thing would be that K Street's influence would be lessened and power would be taken from our civil servants. No longer would a congressman be able to become rich by doing a few favors here and there. It is not a bad start.

If the collection is voluntary there is nothing to handle. States would not make roads, no government no matter how large or small can own property. Once they do they then call it 'public property' and you lose all of your rights including the right to own property because the state will condemn it to build their roads. The intercontinental railroad was built with taxes and used it's ability to steal property to complete the task. The Burlington Northern ran parallel in the north and crossed the continent without condemning anyone's property, built for less and made more money until the government kept subsidizing their line with taxpayer dollars (including tax dollars from Burlington Northern) until they couldn't compete. Your assumption is probably that without coercion no one would pay taxes. There have been two times the country operated in the black without any head tax. All taxes were collected at the border (import duties). A banking system based on money and not fiat currency (debt) reduces the cost of operation of the government to where it can be handled without burdening the people. Costs for police, fire and military can be reduced and with more money to spend purchasing these services becomes easily done for anyone who chooses to do so. The idea that these services can only be provided for by governments is a lie. For every dollar that enters public coffers only one cent returns to the needed project. You have dozens of bureaus collecting, disbursing, and consuming the tax dollar that enters the system as opposed to free enterprise who is paid directly.

While I'd rather see all non-essential taxes just go away, the Fair Tax would be an improvement on the income tax in two major ways.

(1) The government would no longer have an excuse to make you tell them all about your wealth, where you got it, and where it is stored.

(2) The marginal tax rate, and with it the disincentive on producing wealth, would be substantially less than now.

But there are even better alternatives. One would be a simple sales tax, with all food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and services exempt (thus amounting to a tax on discretionary spending). No need to annually refund everybody a "living allowance" under that scheme, the exemptions take care of that.

Who says what kind of house it would apply to? A law based on this statist principle would be subject to all the usual pressures to tax income and "sales however derived".

The original income tax was simple and claimed to be "fair", too. Why would this addition of a major new national sales tax be any different? All the promises and reassurances from advocates making promises they have no authority to make or keep is the slick sales tactic used in virtually any controversial legislation as they try to avoid the essentials and their consequences in pandering to every conceivable interest group. Once the premise is entrenched they go on from there with divide and conquer.

Once the scheme is in place the principle is used to change the formulas to make it more progressive and grant or exclude exemptions and rate changes to favored or targeted kinds of 'purchases'. There isn't anything in principle that is better about this than the current mess, and it would only be added to that so we wind up with both.

The closer it is to "prime time" the more the warts are revealed as you see what the principle means in practice instead of buying into to an advanced sales pitch "this is fair".

Still not discussed is the the nightmare maze of civil rights threats set up by giving states jurisdiction to go after people with shakedowns anywhere outside of their own borders, which this scheme shares with the internet sales tax expansion agenda. Not having to contend with a maze of different state actions interfering in trade was supposed to have been addressed by the Commerce clause in the Constitution. The kind of aggressive punishment and shakedowns this sets up is even worse.