The U.S. tax system is a routine topic of partisan debate, and conservative Autry Pruitt thinks we should just scrap the whole system.
Pruitt, national spokesman for Americans for Fair Taxation, believes the U.S. needs a paradigm shift to fix its taxation problem.
Americans for Fair Taxation, AKA the Fair Tax, is an organization that advocates for a national post-consumption tax. This means that instead of paying taxes straight out of your paycheck, you pay taxes when you actually go and buy things.
By replacing non-consumption-based taxes, such as corporate and income taxes, with a national sales tax, the Fair Tax system would tax people based on activities. As Pruitt explains, that would mean that every receipt would have the federal sales tax in addition to the price of a good or service, simplifying the process of taxation.
Pruitt explained that the Fair Tax bill includes a provision that would have Congress send the bill to all of the states in order to get three-fourths ratification to repeal the U.S.’s current income taxes.
The Fair Tax looks at taxation as the way that the government raises revenue, and though it doesn’t account for people’s direct income, it ultimately makes the biggest consumers pay the biggest share of taxes.
Though some critics suggest that the system is regressive, since it disregards income level, Fair Tax advocates believe that the new tax system would self-regulate. As Pruitt proposes, higher-income consumers would have to pay more taxes than low-income consumers anyway because high-income consumers normally buy more expensive products.
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