“Let’s look at the state of tax cheating under the current system. In 2001, the last year for which information is available, the IRS reports that it collected $345 billion less than it was owed—or about 16 percent of all that was owed, a figure known as “the tax gap”.”
“[W]hen you look at who’ll be collecting this tax, the chances of drumming up a conspiracy suddenly look even worse. In America, .03 percent of all of America’s companies—688 companies, to be exact—sell 48.5 percent of all of the merchandise. Those companies aren't going to help you cheat; there’s simply too much at stake. Date also show that 3.6 percent of all of America’s companies—92,334 firms—collectively make 85.7 percent of all sales… When it comes to the services sector, the fact is that 1.2 percent of all businesses make approximately 80 percent of the sales in the services sector. They have too much to lose to risk helping you cheat. Even if the FairTax were paid only by these few companies, we would still have a better collection rate than the IRS currently has with the income tax.”
“The FairTax takes current individual taxpayers out of the tax collection and payment business altogether. Just how many people would that be? Try 165 million. That’s 165 million people who at present need to be watched, and perhaps audited, by the IRS to ensure compliance. With the FairTax, we’ll have about 25 million businesses to watch instead of 165 million taxpayers… Further, the states and the feds—at least in the forty-five states that have sales taxes—will be looking at the same companies.”
“Just what do we tax under our current system? Work, that’s what. Hard work and productivity. The harder you work, the more you achieve. The more you achieve, the more you’re taxed. To make matters worse, under our “progressive” income tax system, the harder you work, the more severe the punishment actually is!”
“I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.”
“[A] Harvard University study [showed] that, on average, about 22 percent of what you pay for any consumer item or service represents the embedded costs in that item—that is, the embedded costs of our current tax system. Taxes, like some other similarly offensive substances, roll downhill, and you the consumer are standing at the bottom.”