This is a corporate blog - not a political one. But public policy - in the context of positive business impact - is germaine to our focus on competitive advantage in general and supply chain efficiency in particular.
Victor Hugo observed (what has become perhaps cliché) that "nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come". Even though cliché, it is nonetheless true.
An idea whose time has come is the FairTax proposal - as embodied in the US House of Representatives HR 25 and the US Senate S 1025 (for the current legislative sessions). It's a bold, non-partisan proposal - eliminating the IRS, income tax, payroll tax, capital gains - actually all federal taxes in a revenue neutral manner by implementing an inclusive federal sales tax on all consumer sales of new products and services.
It should be implemented just to recover the compliance costs that are currently expended by individuals and companies - that amounts to perhaps $400 - $500 billion annually. Additionally, by its nature, it will capture revenue from the estimated $1.5 trillion 'underground' economy without any attempt at prosecution or enforcement against ill-gotten gain - because the tax will be paid 'at the pump', or 'at the counter' just like anything else.
But what is possibly underestimated - and also somewhat unquantifiable - is what will happen when United States businesses are unfettered from the crippling tax system we currently have and are able to focus on bringing goods and services to the marketplace as efficiently as possible. The FairTax proposal could be the solution to the long term exodus of manufacturing from our shores.
We'll have more discussion of this in future posts. And we welcome your comments and questions.
For further details, please see http://www.fairtax.org.
