Non-Militaristic Wars that have been declared in my lifetime which Americans cannot afford

The War on Poverty; declared by Lyndon Johnson. This will always be un-winnable as long as humans make life decisions that lead them to financial decay, and as long as the government perpetuates poverty by allowing the central bank to inflate the currency through counterfeiting.

The War on Drugs; declared by Richard Nixon and re-declared by the Reagan administration. This war is lost and can never be won. There is two much money on both sides of the issue for it ever to be anything but self perpetuating, and self medication is human weakness that can only be subdued, but not controlled, through education and experience.

The War on Terror; declared by the second Bush administration after the events of 911. This war will self perpetuate as long as we impress our will on foreign soils. The cost, in terms of lost American liberty, has exceeded the monetary cost that has been spent and will be spent since its initiation in 2001 many times over. This lost liberty will never be fully recovered.

The War on Global Warming; declared by presidential candidate Al Gore. This war is based on the egocentric belief that humans have made a permanent, lasting impression on the environment. Global warming is a 10,000 year cyclical phenomena, and the idea that governments can control the weather is utterly absurd.

Listing of Indirect and Direct taxes

Most of us have seen the long list of taxes that have appeared over the last 100 years due to the ever expanding reach of government. But I have yet to see a list of the hidden taxes that we pay, which in some ways are even more insidious than the ones we can see.

Some of these issues are addressed directly by HR25, some may be impacted by HR25, and some we may never get a handle on. Please feel free to add to this list.

Hidden cost of government:

Indirect taxes:

1) Cost of tax compliance – not just limited to income tax filing and record keeping (Have you ever had to stand in line at the DMV?)
2) Cost of employer share of employee withholding – included in consumer's cost of goods and services
3) Cost to companies of government mandated regulations - included in consumers cost of goods and services
4) Cost of corporate taxes - included in consumers cost of goods and services
5) Cost of deficit spending - inflation and interest on federal debt
6) Cost of government subsidies that artificially inflate the cost of goods and services (kind of a double wammy)
7) Multi tiered taxing - tax on tax, included in the cost of goods and services that include components that are produced by multiple and/or vendors/contractors.
8) Pork legislation:
- Funding of the pork itself
- Funding of marginal legislation that may not have passed with out the pork attached (purchasing of votes).
- Tax breaks for entities as a result of the legislation that puts the tax burden elsewhere
8) Intangible costs:
- “Brain Drain” – lost economic opportunity due to time spent on tax avoidance schemes in lieu of creating new wealth.


The following ar costs that are not as well hidden:

Direct Taxes:

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes F
ederal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

The cynical view of Rush Limbaugh on the FairTax

Dear FairTaxers,

Sadly, Rush may be right on this one.

As with entitlements, the politicians use the tax system to extort your vote. And, as with entitlements, we may be to a point of no return. That is to say that there may be more voters who are benefiting (or who are not affected) from the current tax system than there are those that are paying into it.

The FairTax will make these same people pay their share. So why would they support something that is going to take money out of their pocket that wasn’t taken out before?

The vision of democracy that our founding fathers had has somehow gotten turned inside out in the last 100 years. From my point of view, this is largely due to the Federal tax systems (Income, FICA, and Medicare). The unprecedented expansion of the Federal government during this period has occurred principally because of the ability to levy more taxes than ever before, and thus controlling the political and economic focus of the it’s constituents (we, the people) through a tangled web of tax incentives and entitlements. There is something fundamentally wrong with this concept. The federal government should be a puppet of the people, not the other way around.

And don’t think that a government that invented PSYOPS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyops ) is beyond using similar tools or methods to sustain the status quo, or to achieve the support of a political objective that may be perceived as favorable to the narcissistic bureaucracy that the system sustains.

The income tax system has created a class war that is bubbling just below the surface of our society. Our representatives have somehow kept it in check without allowing it to erupt into something ugly, like national unrest or riots. For the most part, their constituents are placated or somatized by the infusions of entitlements or tax incentives. And like a drug habit, it will be extremely painful to rid ourselves of these dependencies.

As citizens, it is our duty to maintain a diligence against this type of tyranny. I just hope that it’s no too late. Make no mistake; we have a very tough row to hoe.


Best Regards

Robert Nathan

The federal tax snowball from hell

Dear Fair Taxers

I just have to post something about this.

The snowball effect of the federal tax burden is significant. Let me
give you an example that I think everyone can relate to.

I am in the construction business. The common denominator in the
costs of most all the goods and services used in our business is
labor. The cost of energy is related to some degree, but even this
is driven by the cost of labor in that the cost of a barrel of oil,
while it may be driven by supply and demand, is largely related to
how much man power it takes to get that barrel of oil out of the
ground and into the market.

As a contractor, I see the impact of taxes and tax compliance as one
of the single major factors in determining the cost of doing
business. Profit is a negligible cost (most large contractors
consider their year to have been a good one if they net 1% after
taxes). However, since the overhead and profit are usually figured
as a percentage of cost, the tax on labor is marked up further by
the percentage of overhead and profit that is estmated for a project.

When a contractor figures a job, he estimates what the labor will
cost and then marks this up with the cost of the tax burden. This
subtotal is marked up again by adding a factor for profit and
overhead. The overhead percentage is normally based on historical
costs, and will include the cost of tax compliance.

Then there is the tiered effect of the construction process. One of
the first things that I learned in this business is that you cannot
beat a man at his trade. In other words, don't try to make
a "widget" unless you have experience at it because the "widget"
makers who do have this experience, can make a "widget" a lot
cheaper and quicker.

As a result of this concept, the industry is highly specialized, and
each component in a building may have three or four tiers
of "widget" makers involved in the delivery process. Each one of
these widget makers is paying taxes on labor, tax compliance and tax
on income. There is also the cost of tax avoidance, which a company
has to pay in order to stay competitive.

At each tier of the fabrication process, the "widget" maker will
pass these costs on to the next tier, who in turn marks it up with
his tax burden and compliance costs, adding the cost of his portion
of the "widget" to the final assembly, and so on.

So consider that the cost of all this tax impact is being marked up
by each tier and passed along to the next tier. The numbers start
becoming significant.

Now consider that the general contractor is not even the final tier
in this process. If our company delivers a building to an owner, who
then in turn leases the space out to a retailer, the owner ads his
own federal tax related costs to the snowball in terms of the rental
cost to the retailer. The retailer finally passes these costs, as
well as his own tax burden costs, on to the consumer.

Think about this the next time you go into a retail store to buy
something. My guess is that the federal tax impact on the final
delivery of goods and services that are produced domestically may be
as high as 50% in some cases. So if you think that federal taxes
only affect your take home pay, you have been cleverly disillusioned
by the system.

The fact of the matter is this; we are also taxed indirectly by the
federal government on the money that we spend.

It's a grand scheme of smoke and mirrors.

Best Regards

Robert Nathan


--- In txfairtax@yahoogroups.com, "apboth" wrote:
>
> I was discussing the Fair Tax with a co-worker yesterday and I was
> explaining that with the elimination of corporate income taxes,
that
> the price of goods would be lowered due to market competition.
His
> question was, what if the company is already paying little or no
tax
> due to tax shelters or off-shore companies? Well, I didn't have a
> good answer.
>
> Can any of you help me out with this?
>








________________________________________________________________________

Privacy and the income tax

I’ve always felt the right to privacy was the core issue, the heart of the matter with regards to the income tax. Proponents of the income tax claim that the constitution doesn’t guarantee an individuals right to privacy.

My argument is that the Founding Fathers felt that this was such an obvious inalienable right, that it wasn’t really necessary to address it directly. One can sense this truth by reading between the lines in the Bill of Rights. Check out the following Articles and determine this for yourself.

Article III

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Article IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Article IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Now read the income tax amendment, Article XVI

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Through the liberal application of the sixteenth amendment, we have seen our right to privacy slowly eroded over the past 90 years. Social Security numbers, which were initiated to track ones retirement savings, are now used to track almost every aspect of a person’s life. In this age of information, it's a scary thought.

The strong sense of individualism that this country was founded on is slowly drifting to mythical status as the application of the income tax code (and other laws built around these philosophical abominations) moves us toward a communal society, as envisioned in novels such as 1984 and Brave New World.

So if you still have any remaining remembrance of the liberty and freedom that we enjoyed prior to the federal government’s meddling in our lives via the enforcement of the tax code, don’t let it go. It’s time to recover our freedom by ending the abomination called the income tax and replacing it with the Fair Tax.

Posting to the Official Blog of the National Taxpayers Union

Robert L Nathan said on Apr 01 2005 at 3:10pm

Dear Mr Liberal Virgenian.

Dude, I don’t understand your logic. How do you figure that Dude A spends 75% of his income on consumer goods @ $20K of income and Dude B spends 60% @ $100K of income? I personally have an income close to Dude B, and I can tell you that what I spend on consumer goods is less than what Dude A spends, primarily because I invest every dime that I can get my hands on in hopes that I can escape the trap of being a corporate slave some day.

I also figure that my investments create other jobs, which is good for everybody. If the workers that are employed through my investments follow the same suit that I do, more and more jobs can be created.

If you want to really get regressive, tax the wealthy to the point where they leave the country. I’ve got to tell you, Costa Rica starts to look awfully good when you start paying 30 cents of every dollar to support the Federal Bureaucracy. As wealth leaves the country, so do jobs. And with fewer jobs, than who is left to pay the taxes? I can assure you that your representatives in Washington are not going to cut their highbrow noses off to spite their faces on this issue, liberal or conservative.

Have you ever considered the possibility that the reason that our labor markets at home can’t compete globally is because the tax burden that employers pay on labor is so high? In spite of the high productivity of the American workers, we cannot overcome weight of wagon that Uncle Sam has loaded for us.

The solution is a hybrid of the consumption tax, known as the Fairtax. Under this proposal the so-called regressively of the consumption tax is nullified by rebating the tax up to the poverty level (factoring in the number of dependents). FICA tax, which is the most regressive of all taxes as far as the poor and lower income people are concerned, goes away.

I recommend that you go to the www.fairtax.org site for more information. I'm sure that if you take a serious look at it, you will come around. It's truly a non-partisan proposal, being embraced by liberals and conservatives alike.

Best Regards

Robert Nathan
La Jolla, California

Response to article in the Seattle PI

Dear Mr. Hassett,

I read your article at seattlept.com entitled “Tax reform takes a back seat to partisan rankling”, and thought you might like to know how a good number of the American people plan to enforce some solidarity on the tax reform issue.

The Fairtax organization consists of 600,000 plus dedicated members, and our ranks are growing daily. We are a grassroots group committed to a total overhaul of the Federal tax system and replacing it with a fair and transparent tax, which cannot be easily manipulated by those that derive their power from money rather than the will of the people.

You can bet that we will make this a major issue during the months prior to the next election. The politicians may be in denial about it today, but rest assured, they will be getting a sobering wakeup call.

I suggest that you visit our website at www.fairtax.org and become acquainted with HR25 and S25, these bills being introduced and supported by representatives on both sides of party lines.

Very Truly Yours

Robert L. Nathan
December, 2005
San Diego, CA.

Letter to Senator Shelby about the Flat Tax

Dear Senator Shelby,

I grew up in the Muscle Shoals, Alabama area and I have many fond memories from those days. My father and brothers still reside in Alabama. I am now and have been for many years a Texan and while my heart is here, my soul will always reside in Muscle Shoals.

I have been following the tax reform efforts that are now underway with a keen interest. Having been born into the current income tax system, I have often wondered how it came about, as it does not reflect the American ideals that I learned about as a child while in school on the banks of the Tennessee River. During the past few years, I have done quite a bit of study on this subject, and I have come to see it as a mechanism for enslaving the middle and lower classes of this country.

While I applaud you for recognizing the need for significant tax reform, I do not think the flat tax is the answer. The flat tax does not take the tax burden off of the poor, nor does it take the cost of compliance out of the cost of goods and services. It is not a transparent tax (no one will know the total cost of the tax). More over, it will be subject to the same K street manipulation that has occurred over the past century, at the expense of those that shoulder the bulk of the tax burden. There are many more arguments against the flat tax, but let me just refer you to the web site that has all the information that you need.

Please visit www.fairtax.org, which is the tax system that I support and will be promoting along with at least 600,000 other Americans this coming election.

Very Truly Yours

Robert Lindsay Nathan, Jr.