Sales tax idea in Congress would drown us in taxes

The last time I wrote about Thomas Wright, a leading spokesman for the "FairTax" movement, I said his name was synonymous with "indefatigable." That's because at the time, last summer, a Democratic tide was poised to wash ashore. Democrats tend not to be advocates for his cause, and yet Wright was brimming with optimism.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that now, a year later on the calendar — but eons into a new political galaxy far, far away from free markets and manageable federal spending — he's more optimistic than ever.

It makes you wonder — if things were going his way, would he be depressed?

A year ago, Wright came to see the Deseret News editorial board as part of a trip to lobby Utah lawmakers. This time, I contacted him at his Florida office because of a story I had just read in the Washington Post about how even the Alice-in-Wonderland world of Congress is beginning to understand that $2 trillion deficits may not be good for the nation — especially when health-care reform looms on the horizon like a catastrophic fiscal illness. And so lawmakers, for the first time, are beginning to talk seriously about imposing a national sales tax.

The FairTax is a sales tax. Wright's idea would be to impose one nationwide, but to do it in place of virtually every other tax we now currently pay. Everything you buy, from this newspaper to your child's college tuition, would be taxed at about 25 percent, but you would have a lot more take-home pay to cover the cost.

The idea now floating around Congress, however, is to impose a national sales tax (or, more accurately, a "value-added tax") of 25 percent in addition to all the other taxes you now pay. The tax would be added to every step of the manufacturing process, so items actually would end up costing much more than just 25 percent more.

That just might cover the cost of health care if, after the shock of such a mammoth tax increase, there were any jobs left out there to issue paychecks. It's sort of a sick twist on the old joke about "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Everyone has basic health care. Nobody has any money.

Wright was especially amused by the comments of Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center. The Post quoted him as saying such a tax is "common to the rest of the world, and we don't have it."

"Ah, yes," Wright said, "Let's do what France and Germany have done. They have such vibrant economies."