Mike Huckabee (Tax Reform)

Huckabee's Tax Reform (section page)

FairTax System

Proposed a FairTax system (MHWTR)

• abolish IRS and tax code
• eliminate all income tax, including payroll, Medicare, Social Security, and investment income taxes
• establish national sales tax
• “senior bonus payment” instead of Social Security
• bonus payments to poor individuals
• claim: the FairTax system will ensure that everyone including criminals will be required to pay the tax, since it is a sales tax instead of income tax, reinvest $22 trillion parked offshore back to the United States, grow economy by 6% each year, create millions of manufacturing jobs

FairTax is better than punishing productivity

"If we got rid of all the taxes on our work, got rid of the taxes on our savings, investments, capital gains, and inheritance, and made a zero tax, we'd pay at the point of consumption. Why should we punish people for their productivity? The FairTax doesn't punish people for doing well and building the economy. Give a person his whole paycheck because every American would no longer have a payroll tax taken out." (RD3)

FairTax gets rid of IRS and sifts power back to the states

"Q: Will you abolish or cut the size of the EPA, the IRS, the Department of Education?

HUCKABEE: There are a lot of things happening at the federal level that are absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution. This is power that should be shifted back to the states, whether it's the EPA or the Department of Education. We can get rid of the Internal Revenue Service if we would pass the FairTax, and move power back where the founders believed it should have been all along."(RD1)

FairTax broadens tax base to include non-wage-earners

"Q: You say that changing entitlements would be breaking a promise to the American people, and you say that you can keep those programs, save Social Security, save Medicare, without major reforms through a FairTax, which is a broad tax on consumption. How that would work?

HUCKABEE: One of the reasons that Social Security is in so much trouble is that the only funding stream comes from people who get a wage. The people who get wages is declining dramatically. Most of the income in this country is made by people at the top who get dividends and capital gains. The FairTax transforms the process by which we fund Social Security and Medicare because the money paid in consumption is paid by everybody, including illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, all the people that are freeloading off the system now. That's why it ought to be a transformed system." (RD1)