Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, December 12, 2007 11:47:03 AM
As I was researching my FairTax critique, I visited the website
Americans For Fair Taxation. On the site, they had a form for submitting a question to the experts (
link here). Since it only allowed 255 characters, I was forced to submit a rather abbreviated question, but I did ask the following:
How will you handle free sales by Indian reservations? As I understand it, our treaties do not allow us to impose the FairTax on Indian nations, but it will hurt competitors if Indian reservations have a huge price advantage.We will see what answer I get. I will keep everyone informed.
If I do get an answer, perhaps I will submit some of my other concerns. After all, it is not a personal vendetta I have against the FairTax. I would really like for there to be a better system of taxation, I just don't think the FairTax is it. And I am a bit leery of the true believers, as they often give the impression of not being completely honest (in addition to sounding a bit too zealous in their support, often sounding a little bit cultish).
But to be fair, I will give them a chance to answer my concerns. As they tout these replies as coming from "the experts" I do expect a relatively high quality of response, however, and will be rather disappointed if I hear nothing, or get brushed off with an incomplete or dismissive response.
More to follow, once I get a reply.
Update 12/12/2007I just noticed the typo in my question. I was so busy trying to keep under the 255 character limit, I wrote "free sales" rather than "tax free sales".
Allow me a moment to vent about a pet peeve here. It is 2007, consumers are buying terabyte hard drives for home use, can't we PLEASE allow more than 255 characters for customer complaint forms, political inquiries and other on-line forms? Databases of all types allow almost unlimited text input, and the overhead is minimal. (I have been both a programmer and a Unix administrator professionally for a very long time, and a programming hobbyist since the VIC20/Sinclair/TRS80 days; I know of what I speak.) So, why on earth are we limited to trying to describe software failures (or questions about the FairTax) in 255 characters or less?
Enough venting for now. Just wanted to admit that there was a small typo in my original question. Hopefully the context will make clear what I was asking anyway. If not, I will resubmit, I suppose.
(Note: 12/18/2007 - My original post said 255 words, rather than 255 characters, this has since been corrected.)
UPDATE 12/18/2007I am still waiting for a reply, but at least I am getting FairTax spam! I still have no response, but that isn't really surprising, as it has been less than a week, and getting anything done between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day is a headache, to say the least. On the other hand, they wasted no time in adding me to the mailing list.
I'll give them credit for two things though. First, I don't think the FairTax people sold my name to any other mailing lists, which I appreciate. Second, they have been remarkably restrained and sent only one email so far, and that one is actually pretty relevant to their central mission. So, if you have a question for the FairTax people, I can say that you need not fear giving your real email address, they seem to be pretty decent in the way they handle personal information.
Of course, having said that, I will probably get a dozen "Hot Naked FairTax Babes!" emails and have to publish a retraction...
UPDATE 12/28/2007Still no reply after 16 days. I also note that no new questions have appeared in the "Question Archives" page on the site. As many holidays and short weeks have come between my original question and today, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Since New Year's Day is coming up, I will give the FairTax folks until the 15th of January to at least make a token response. If I hear nothing by then, I will post that fact here and then post the same question one more time. It will be interesting to see what happens.
UPDATE 01/22/2008It has been over a month since I sent my question to the FairTax.org "ask the experts" page. Guess what. Except for a bit of spam about a new "tax calculator" page, I have heard absolutely nothing from them.
To see if I can get a response, I am going to submit my previous question and another question tomorrow (if work allows) and see what response I get. I will create a new post about the two new questions, to keep it at the top of my blog.
The new question will be:
Since tax payments are not monitored on an individual basis, what prevents anyone from creating bogus catering, home improvement, and other businesses and never paying any sales tax?
The previous question, which I will also submit is:
How will you handle tax free sales
by Indian reservations? As I understand it, our treaties do not allow
us to impose the FairTax on Indian nations, but it will hurt
competitors if Indian reservations have a huge price advantage.As I said, this new attempt will be tracked in a new post, as this one has drifted pretty far down in the ranks. I do not have much hope of getting a response.