REPUBLICANS PLAN TO PUSH FOR THE ELIMINATION OF IRS
A domestic centerpiece of the Bush/GOP agenda for a second Bush term is getting rid of the
Internal Revenue Service.
The Speaker of the House will push for replacing the nation's current tax system with a
national sales tax or a value added tax.
"People ask me if I’m really calling for the elimination of the IRS, and I say I
think that’s a great thing to do for future generations of Americans," Speaker
of the House Dennis Hastert explains in his new book just released.
"Pushing reform legislation will be difficult. Change of any sort seldom comes easy.
But these changes are critical to our economic vitality and our economic security
abroad," Hastert declares in SPEAKER: LESSONS FROM FORTY YEARS IN COACHING AND
POLITICS.
"If you own property, stock, or, say, one hundred acres of farmland and tax time is
approaching, you don’t want to make a mistake, so you’re almost obliged to go to
a certified public accountant, tax preparer, or tax attorney to help you file a correct
return. That costs a lot of money. Now multiply the amount you have to pay by the total
number of people who are in the same boat. You can’t. No one can because precise
numbers don’t exist. But we can stipulate that we’re talking about a huge
amount. Now consider that a flat tax, national sales tax, or VAT would not only eliminate
the need to do this, it could also eliminate the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) itself and
make the process of paying taxes much easier."
"By adopting a VAT, sales tax, or some other alternative, we could begin to change
productivity. If you can do that, you can change gross national product and start growing
the economy. You could double the economy over the next fifteen years. All of a sudden,
the problem of what future generations owe in Social Security and Medicare won’t be
so daunting anymore. The answer is to grow the economy, and the key to doing that is
making sure we have a tax system that attracts capital and builds incentives to keep it
here instead of forcing it out to other nations." |
