The Fairtax plan will benefit the economy and the majority of Americans

Prebate So I guess this means that you understand why essentials cannot be exempt from the tax and why the prebate is necessary? 1) 23 Percent Math Sorry, I didn't realize that you still didn't understand it, I would have proved it for you if you wanted(i.e. if x/y = .23, than x/(y-x) = .3). And it's not a "snow job" to use the tax-inclusive rate of 23 percent when comparing the fairtax to the current income tax, because the current tax is also on a tax-inclusive basis. The only way to make meaningful comparison between the two(and include the prebate) is to report the fairtax as tax-inclusive. I'll agree that the actual at the counter rate should also be disclosed in any discussion of the tax, but I don't agree that fairtax promoters are being disingenuous when they are comparing the fairtax to the income tax and use the 23% number. The way I understand the increase in investment is like this: the fairtax would shift a small percentage of consumption spending into savings, but since consumption is so much greater than savings, a small percent decrease in consumption will amount to a large percent increase in savings, which ultimately leads to a large increase in investment, which causes the economy to grow faster, which causes consumption and therefore federal revenue to be greater than what it would have been in the long term. You say illegals, drug dealers, and prostitutes don't account for much money, but I already stated that the current black market is over $1 trillion. Maybe some of its being taxed by the guys higher up like you said, but I think its fair to say that the fairtax would capture more of this market because they all need to buy food and other things. 2) Regressive Unless the middle class is spending more than they're making, they're not going to be paying more in taxes. I already told you who would be: people making their money on capital gains and effectively hiding it, undocumented workers, those involved in illegal money-making schemes(drug dealing etc.), and those who rely on old money. Wage-earners at all levels who spend 100% of their income can expect to see their taxes reduced under the fairtax. This brings me to a point that I should have made earlier on, perhaps the main reason why the fairtax is the FAIRtax. Who's taxes will rise under the fairtax you ask? Well you can bet that those who reap the profits of our untaxed corporations will. "more than 60 percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000 when corporate profits were soaring and that corporate tax receipts had fallen to just 7.4 percent of overall federal tax revenue in 2003" http://www.americanprogress.org... There are so many tax-breaks and exemptions for the rich corporations of our country, whose owners should be carrying a much greater tax-burden, it's just not fair. The fairtax eliminates these tax-breaks and subsidies, making it so that if the government wants to give monetary favor to a corporation or industry, they have to do so directly and transparently. This is the reason why the fairtax will likely never come to fruition, because special interests will suffer under the fairtax, not because the middle class will. I didn't merely have a problem with the source of the links, I had specific problems with each one that you failed to address. For example, the graph from factcheck.org compares the percent of total revenue produced by each income class, not the tax rate of an individual, and the numbers are so close that I would need to see how they arrived at those numbers because it may be the case that they are not significantly(statistically) different. The fairtax would tax the rich on their wealth if they were spending more than their taxable income. The current system only taxes income and has no potential to tax wealth that may or may not have been taxed when it was earned decades ago. There is no inclusive/exclusive rigmarole, like I stated previously, in order to accurately compare the two tax systems, the fairtax must be quoted on an inclusive basis. 3) Enforcement Collection Problem Again, the underground market for good is substantial, over $1 trillion. There is a huge incentive to evade taxes, and while it may not be so easy for wage-earners to do, it is possible for those who make money in other ways because they are able to exploit the complexity of the system. Ebay is really not that big of a deal. Not only are the stats that you posted irrelevant(we're concerned with sellers, not users, and GMV would probably be more appropriate than net revenues), but when considering that GDP(and therefore net expenditures) is roughly 10 trillion dollars, and that net federal revenue is estimated around 3.4 trillion dollars, it is seen that ebay is rather insignificant. However, that's not to say ebay would go unregulated. I would imagine that the "powersellers" would be subject to the most scrutiny, and that government agents would patrol the web, acting as buyers trying to convince the seller to waive the taxes. As for pissing off the rest of the world because we're taxing imports, what are they gonna do? I really don't think it's an issue, American goods will become more competitive and if other countries feel the need to impose tariffs, let them. Nobody will complain about discrimination because all imports(all sales) would be taxed, the logical thing for them to do would be to adopt their own fairtax or a similar system that allows them to drop their taxes on exports and impose it on imports. You do bring up an interesting point with online sales from foreign countries, I don't really know how those would be treated. Are them imports bought domestically? Or are they being purchased in a foreign country? Perhaps all foreign online purchases would be subject to the tax, used or new for simplicity with the assumption that the vast majority of these purchases will be for new goods. Than it would just be a matter of requiring paypal, or its equivelent, to charge the tax for all foreign purchases. Taxing Undocumented ("Illegal") Immigrants Myth You clearly do not have a very strong grasp of economics. If employee wages are lowered, undocumented employee wages will certainly not be raised, that would make no sense for the employer. They would likely be lowered as well, or at best remain stagnant. Employers aren't going to sympathize with undocumented workers because they don't get the prebate check. If it used to cost $20 to pay an employee $15, or $10 to pay an illegal $10, but now it costs $15 to pay an employee $15, the incentive to go with the illegal suddenly got cut in half. To maintain the same 2:1 incentive, illegal wages will drop to $7.50. Credit Card Debt (Capital Gains Tax Rate = mistake, i guess?) You need to read your own links buddy, the one you posted does not say that the median amount of debt is between $5,100 and $9,000. It says: "If the underreporting hypothesis is right, the truth for the average credit card debt owed per U.S. household probably lies somewhere between the extremes of $5,100 and $9,000." "Given the likely underreporting of credit card debt, the $2,200 median figure from the Survey of Consumer Finance (for households that carry a balance) is probably too low although it is impossible to say how low."