Americans For Fair Taxation
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Americans For Fair Taxation (AFFT), also known as FairTax.org, is a U.S. political advocacy group based in Clearwater, Florida that is dedicated to fundamental tax code replacement.FairTax
Executive Leadership
It is made up of
volunteer Volunteering is a voluntary act of an individual or group freely giving time and labor for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency rescue. Others serve ...
s who are working to get the '' Fair Tax Act'' (/) enacted in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
– a plan to replace all federal
payroll A payroll is the list of employees of some company that is entitled to receive payments as well as other work benefits and the amounts that each should receive. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks pe ...
and
income taxes An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times the taxable income. Ta ...
(both corporate and personal) with a national retail sales tax and monthly tax "prebate" to
household A household consists of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is i ...
s of citizens and legal resident aliens. The organization claims it is the largest, single-issue grassroots taxpayers union in the United States, with over 800,000 supporters. The organization states that it subscribes to the ideals of simplicity, fairness, and freedom which they believe are embodied in the FairTax.


History

AFFT was founded in 1994 by three Houston businessmen, Jack Trotter, Bob McNair, and Leo Linbeck, Jr., who each pledged $1.5 million as seed money to hire tax experts to identify what they perceived as faults with the current tax system, to determine what American citizens would like to see in tax reform, and then to design the best system of taxation. The three went on to raise an additional $17 million to fund focus groups with citizens around the country and tax policy studies. Some of the experts funded include: *Professors David Burton and Dan Mastromarco,
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
and The Argus Group *
Laurence Kotlikoff Laurence Jacob Kotlikoff (born January 30, 1951) is a Professor of Economics at Boston University, a William Warren Fairfield Professor at Boston University, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Research Associate of the Natio ...
,
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
* Stephen Moore, The Cato Institute *Professor
Dale Jorgenson Dale Weldeau Jorgenson (May 7, 1933 – June 8, 2022) was the Samuel W. Morris University Professor at Harvard University, teaching in the department of economics and John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as chairman of the departmen ...
,
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
* Bill Beach (economist), the
Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the preside ...
* Jim Poterba, The National Bureau of Economic Research *Professor George Zodrow,
Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...
and the Baker Institute for Public Policy *Professor Joseph Kahn,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...


Criticisms

Some have criticized Americans For Fair Taxation for the way that they present the FairTax plan. The most common critique is the presented FairTax rate of a 23% sales tax on the total transaction value of new retail
goods In economics, goods are items that satisfy human wants and provide utility, for example, to a consumer making a purchase of a satisfying product. A common distinction is made between goods which are transferable, and services, which are not t ...
and
services Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...
purchases; consumers pay to the government 23 cents of every dollar spent (sometimes called ''tax inclusive''). However, American sales taxes have historically been expressed as a percentage of the original sale price (sometimes called ''tax exclusive''), this gives a 30% FairTax rate; items priced at $100 pre-tax cost $130 with the tax added. The use of the tax inclusive number in presenting the rate has been criticized as deceptive and by some as a "lie". However, AFFT argues that the 23% number represents a better comparison to income tax rates. Taxpayers in a 25% income tax bracket pay $25 in federal income taxes out of every $100 they earn. With the 23% FairTax, taxpayers would pay $23 in taxes out of every $100 they spend. This is also how the legislation is written – as an inclusive tax. In 2007
Bruce Bartlett Bruce Reeves Bartlett (born October 11, 1951) is an American historian and author. He served as a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under George H. W. Bush. Bartlett also writes for the New York Times Economi ...
wrote that FairTax was originally devised by the Church of Scientology in the early 1990s as a way to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service. Representative
John Linder John Elmer Linder (born September 9, 1942) is an American politician who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1993 to 2011. His district was numbered the from 1993 to 1997, the from 1997 to 2003, and the from 2003 u ...
told ''
the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger between ...
'' that Bartlett confused the FairTax movement with the Scientology-affiliated Citizens for an Alternative Tax System. Leo Linbeck, AFFT Chairman and CEO, stated "As a founder of Americans For Fair Taxation, I can state categorically, however, that Scientology played no role in the founding, research or crafting of the legislation giving expression to the FairTax."


See also

* FairTax *
Americans for Tax Reform Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is a politically conservative U.S. advocacy group whose stated goal is "a system in which taxes are simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today." According to ATR, "The government's power to contro ...
* Citizens for an Alternative Tax System * Citizens for Tax Justice *
National Taxpayers Union The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) is a fiscally conservative taxpayer advocacy organization and taxpayers union in the United States, founded in 1977 by James Dale Davidson. NTU says that it is the oldest taxpayer advocacy organization in th ...
*
Tax Foundation The Tax Foundation is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1937 by a group of businessmen in order to "monitor the tax and spending policies of government agencies". The Tax Foundation collects data and publishe ...
* James M. Bennett *
Americans Standing for the Simplification of the Estate Tax Americans Standing for the Simplification of the Estate Tax (ASSET) is a lobbying group of individuals and private businesses, which advocates changing the collection method for the estate tax in the United States. ASSET works with think tanks, e ...


Notes

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External links


Official site

Organizational Profile
National Center for Charitable Statistics The National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) is a clearing house for information about the nonprofit sector of the U.S. economy. The National Center for Charitable Statistics builds national, state, and regional databases and develops sta ...
(
Urban Institute The Urban Institute is a Washington, D.C.–based think tank that carries out economic and social policy research to "open minds, shape decisions, and offer solutions". The institute receives funding from government contracts, foundations and pr ...
) Economic advocacy groups in the United States Nonpartisan organizations in the United States Non-profit organizations based in Texas Tax reform in the United States Taxpayer groups Scientology-related controversies