The Fair Tax Plan Can't Happen Soon Enough!

I’m far more Libertarian than I am Democrat or Republican. The L-word can be a bad one for a lot of people, many of whom picture Libertarians as a bunch of pot-heads yammering for drug-legalization. And sure, there’s a lot of them to be found among the ranks. However, I hew more to the strict definition of Libertarian.

The World's Smallest Political Quiz defines Libertarians as those who, “support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.”

Why do I uncharacteristically go all political and start mentioning Libertarians here? Because I like Neal Boortz.

That’s right, I said it. I like Atlanta-based radio on-air personality and card-carrying Libertarian Neal Boortz. He’s terribly entertaining and he’s the guy who I first heard singing the praises of the Fair Tax Plan a couple of years back.

What’s the Fair Tax plan? Well, in case you haven’t heard, the Fair Tax plan is a proposal by which the I R S would be done away with and a new National Sales Tax would be instituted whereby our income tax would be paid through the purchase of goods and services. Such basic necessities as food, shelter, transportation, etc. would still be taxed, but those people with incomes near the poverty level (i.e. folks who aren’t paying income tax under the current system anyway) would receive a monthly rebate of their taxes so they wouldn’t be unfairly treated.

All your frequently asked questions about the plan can be answered at the Fair Tax Page. One question they won’t answer, though, is why precisely am I bringing up Libertarians, Neal Boortz and Fair Tax in the first place.

Because if the Fair Tax system were in place now, I wouldn’t be having to deal with all the patrons coming in and bugging me for obscure income tax forms we don’t have!

Today, from the time I arrived, the next five patrons through the door were after tax forms. One lady looked as though she might bust out crying if she couldn’t get a state tax form right that second. Three others needed obscure forms we don’t stock, but which we can print out from the internet. So every time I’d print off a page or two for a patron and then return the browser back to our standard Opac home page, someone else would come in and need odd forms too and I’d have to go back to the I R S site and hunt them down. After the third time doing this in so many minutes, I just resigned myself to the fact that we’d be pestered by tax people all day and left an extra browser window open to the I R S forms & pubs site.

Of course, after doing that, I didn’t have another obscure tax form request for the rest of the day.