Covering the nationwide Tea Parties held in various cities on Tax
Day, Southern Political Report’s Tom Baxter wrote of the
Atlanta event: “What it looked like most of all was a Fair Tax
rally. Advocates of the national sales tax idea looked like the
largest and most enthusiastic contingent in the crowd.”
Conservative commentator Sean Hannity agreed, pronouncing Atlanta
“Fair Tax land.”
And indeed it was. Watching Fox News coverage of the local tax
revolts, one could not help but notice the many protesters
showing support for a House bill popularly known as the “Fair
Tax,” which calls for the abolishment of the IRS and the
replacement of the income tax with a national sales tax.
Fair Tax supporters are particularly thick on the ground in
Atlanta because that’s where popular talk radio host Neal Boortz
— co-author of two books on the proposal — broadcasts his
nationally syndicated program. On the same day, a Fair Tax rally
drew about 2,000 enthusiastic supporters in neighboring South
Carolina, where Boortz and fellow advocate, former Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee, spoke. Tea parties in Columbia and Charleston also
had a noticeably strong Fair Tax presence.
The Fair Tax would replace existing federal taxes — the personal
income tax, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, even payroll
taxes for Social Security and Medicare — with a 30 percent
national retail sales tax on the final sale of all goods and
services. As Laurence Vance of the Ludwig von Mises Institute put
it in a recent lecture, “The appeal is obvious: no more complex
tax code, no more taxes withheld from paychecks, no more 1040
forms, no more record keeping, no more compliance costs, no more
IRS audits.”
Nevertheless, even many conservatives and libertarians have
serious concerns about the workability of the Fair Tax. It would
require state and local governments to pay sales taxes to
Washington and the federal government to pay sales taxes to
itself. Claimed prices would probably not fall by as much as Fair
Tax supporters project. Worst of all, as Vance points out, “There
is nothing to prevent an income tax from being reinstituted,
giving us a two-headed hydra of an income tax and a consumption
tax.”
Despite the Fair Tax’s shortcomings as policy, politically it has
brought together a coalition of conservative, largely
middle-class activists looking for radical solutions to big
government and its most detested public symbol, the Internal
Revenue Service. I’ve never met a Fair Tax supporter who wouldn’t
prefer not to be taxed at all, whether on income or consumption.
Said Charleston Fair Tax activist John Steinberger of his cause,
“It’s a good first step.” Admits Vance, an ardent Fair Tax
opponent, “It is the most radical tax reform plan, bar none.”
The Fair Tax’s radicalism is key. The tea party protesters seemed
to genuinely desire a radical change in the way our government
conducts its business, not simply minor reforms or more
business-as-usual. If sustained, this sharp right turn at the
grassroots level could have a serious political impact.
Republicans have been promising conservatives smaller government
for decades, but delivering the exact opposite. The tea parties
may have been primarily born of President Obama’s recent
stimulus, but praise for the GOP at the various events was almost
nonexistent.
Leading Republicans have been slow to grasp the increasing anger
of conservative activists over taxes, spending, and monetary
policy. In 2008, only Mike Huckabee and libertarian firebrand Ron
Paul expressed qualified support for the Fair Tax, while the
other Republican presidential candidates kept their distance.
Mitt Romney, a favorite of many conservatives, went so far as to
laugh at the idea during a radio interview in Florida.
Yet if the tea party trend showed anything, it’s that the most
passionate conservative activists in the country are tired of
such weak tea. The Fair Tax may not be the best policy idea for
reversing the federal government’s explosive growth. But far from
being a danger or even a distraction to the anti-government
message, the Fair Tax movement is valuable precisely because it
helps cultivate citizens’ willingness to consider radical
changes, pushing back against resurgent big-government
liberalism.
The conservative cause of reducing government and slashing
spending has always been an ambitious effort. Libertarian and
conservative critics of the Fair Tax must express their valid
policy concerns, but without dismissing the thousands of
committed activists who have been mobilized by the proposal.
Any serious challenges to the status quo will require serious
challengers. And whatever the shortcomings of a national sales
tax, the patriotic Americans who make up the Fair Tax movement
are at least dead serious about a kind of change that
small-government supporters of all stripes can believe in.
