Is the Fair Tax the fairest tax option?
by Harlan Brown
The so-called “Fair Tax” is a proposed national sales tax. The Fair Tax addresses at least two problems with the current income tax system in the United States:
- The current income tax is graduated, or “progressive,” punishing productivity.
- The current income tax is used not just to raise revenue but for social engineering, promoting causes that appeal to the persons in power.
Different types of taxes can be divided into three categories:
- Regressive: hitting the poor the hardest
- Progressive: hitting the rich the hardest
- Flat: treating all income levels equally
“A heavy progressive or graduated income tax” is Plank #2 of the Communist Manifesto. It is one of the ways the Communists promote class warfare.
Sales taxes, on the other hand, are by their nature regressive. In general, poor people spend a larger percentage of their income on taxable items than do wealthy people. Wealthy people tend to spend a larger percentage of their income on investments not affected by sales taxes. The Fair Tax appears to be better than the current complicated, oppressive taxation system. Is there, however, an even fairer tax?
Supporters of the Fair Tax argue that their proposal contains elements that compensate for the regressive nature of the sales tax. Opponents argue that such compensation is inadequate and that the Fair tax hits the middle class (income range $15,000 to $200,000, which includes poor people at the lower end of the range) the hardest. Certainly for elderly retired people who are living on their savings, a 30% income tax on purchases paid for with money that is already income-taxed, the so-called Fair Tax would hit hard.
If there is no God, there is no basis for objective, absolute morality; each person uses human reasoning to try to figure out what is right and what is wrong. If God exists and the Holy Bible is His inspired word, we have a solid basis for distinguishing between right and wrong, good and evil. If you believe that the Bible is the word of God, you have divinely revealed information available to determine what type of taxation is the fairest. The Creator God of the Bible is love and light and truth. He is the fairest being in the universe.
According to the Bible, the Israelites were a people who had been enslaved for centuries. When they left Egypt and headed for the Promised Land, they had no clue how to set up their government. God told them what to do. If the Bible is true, the instructions on taxation are not the ideas of Moses but the words of the Creator.
What did those instructions involve? They involved a system of tithing. A tithe is a tenth of one's increase, or income. This is what God considered fair for everyone. Everybody paid a tenth of their income. Today we would call that a flat income tax.
The system was actually a little more involved than just a single tithe. Church and state were combined in those days, and the system involved three tithes:
- A tithe that went to the Levites (Leviticus 27:30), who served a dual role as religious leaders and government leaders
- A festival tithe (Deut. 12:17 and 14:23-25) that was saved up to cover expenses to attend certain annual religious festivals (Lev. 23)
- A welfare tithe (Deut. 14:28-29 and 26:12) that was paid in the third and sixth years of a seven-year cycle to benefit widows and orphans
I am not advocating a return to Old Testament triple tithing. I am simply pointing out that the taxation system given by the infinitely wise and loving God was a flat income tax. Yes, the flat tax is fairer than the Fair Tax.