Nothing is fair about the 'Fair Tax'

This is in response to Robert F. Liker's letter ("Fair Tax would put citizens in control," Jan. 7) in which he urged citizens to support the proposal to replace the federal income tax system with a national "consumption" tax.

His letter is full of misinformation and misleading statements. He offers no evidence for his charge that "federal corruption and control" have made the federal tax system "a monster that torments the people and serves special interests." Since a federal "consumption tax" would also be administered by the federal government, Liker failed to explain how it would be under less federal control. He never attempts to explain who these "corrupt" people might be.

A progressive tax is defined as "any tax in which the rate increases as the amount subject to taxation increases." The theory behind the federal income tax is that those with larger incomes can and should be taxed at higher rates than those with smaller incomes. Mr. Liker's characterization of his "Fair" sales tax as "progressive" is misleading at best. Despite the fact that a sales tax generates more tax revenue the more someone spends, it does so at the same rate. Low income people pay the same sales tax rate as the very wealthy. That is not a progressive tax.

Finally, those trumpeting a national sales tax never mention the near impossibility for an individual to keep track of how much sales tax they pay to various taxing bodies that levy sales taxes. It would be no different with a national sales tax. Every time anyone bought something, the store would collect a federal sales tax, and over the course of the year, that individual would have no idea how much he or she had paid, unless they saved every single purchase receipt and added them up. I know exactly how much I paid in federal income tax last year.

The bottom line is that a national sales tax would probably drain more cash out of our wallets than the income tax and would make it easier for politicians to obscure how much money individual citizens are sending to Washington.

I'll take the income tax system and suggest we would be better served by devoting our energy to fixing it, rather than replacing it with a system that would hit wage earners harder and be even less accountable.

Michael Reich

Glendale Heights