Is the National Sales Tax Bill DEAD? Top Republicans say they will NOT back him

Top Republicans have rejected the idea of ​​abolishing the IRS and replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters on Capitol Hill this week that he would not support the Fair Tax Act, a bill proposed by some in his caucus that would impose a tax of up to 30 percent on all sales.

Asked if he would put the bill up for a floor vote, McCarthy said it “would have to go through committee.”

A vote on the bill was reportedly promised as part of the deal to get McCarthy the Speaker’s gavel.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ge., has so far amassed 30 cosponsors. It would eliminate all income taxes, payroll taxes, estate taxes, and gift taxes in favor of a single tax that would make the IRS obsolete.

But Majority Leader Steve Scalise doesn’t agree either; instead, he told The Hill that he supports making the tax cuts in President Trump’s 2017 bill permanent.

“We simplified the code and got rid of a lot of loopholes, so I want us to continue to focus on fairness and simplicity in a tax code,” Scalise argued.

He also seemed to question whether the bill would reach the full House.

“Any member can introduce a bill,” Scalise said. ‘That doesn’t mean the bill is going to be approved by committee or by the plenary.’

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters they are not behind the Fair Tax Act.

“That’s why we went back to the normal order,” he added. “We got rid of a lot of the [former Speaker Nancy] Pelosi [(D-Calif.)] rules, where a bill is written in the Speaker’s office and poured out on everyone. You know, take it or leave it. This is not how we do business.

Proponents of an excise tax argue that the system allows Americans to choose how much they pay in taxes by choosing how much they spend, thus encouraging savings and investment.

The bill came on the heels of a vote to recover $72 billion of some $80 billion in additional funding Democrats gave to the IRS in the last Congress, much of which is slated to hire 87,000 new IRS agents. IRS.

The IRS’s fiscal year 2022 budget request was only $13 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the GOP-approved bill would add about $114 billion to the deficit.

‘This transforms the US tax code from a convoluted, progressive and mandatory system to a completely transparent and unbiased system that kills the IRS as we know it. It’s good for our economy because it encourages working, saving and investing,’ said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., a cosponsor of the legislation, in a statement.

Filing taxes in the US is much more expensive and time consuming than in other advanced economies: Americans spend 2.6 billion hours and $209 billion a year doing it, according to a 2022 estimate from the American Action Forum .

Larry Kudlow, former director of Donald Trump’s National Economic Council, called the plan a “terrible idea” when he interviewed McCarthy this week.

During a recent speech, Biden scoffed at the idea: “National sales tax, that’s a great idea…go home and tell your moms, they’re going to be so excited about it.”

Grover Norquist, a tax cut advocate, told Semafor the plan amounted to a “political giveaway to Biden and the Democrats.” Liberal lawmakers have been enjoying the proposal.

‘This so-called fair tax plan is the craziest yet. It’s really unbelievable,” Senate Majority Chuck Schumer told reporters as he appeared alongside House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries at a new conference dedicated to rejecting the bill. ‘Just the biggest lollapalooza I’ve seen around here.’

Democrats have tried to divert focus from the fact that Americans could keep their entire paycheck and focus only on rising costs.

‘The Republican tax plan would increase the cost of buying a home by $125,000. It would increase the cost of buying a car by $10,000. It would increase your average grocery bill by $3,500 a year at a time when people are already worried about the high price of groceries. How can they do this?’ Schumer said.

‘Things like eggs are already too expensive, but the Republicans want to add another $1.50 to that price. The plan would make a gallon of milk cost another $1.70 more,” he added.

“You wonder who is sitting in some brig, some lab, some basement cooking up these extreme ideas to try and swallow the American people,” Jeffries added.

When asked about the Republican proposal, centrist Senator Joe Manchin asked reporters on Capitol Hill: “Are you serious?”

The Tax Policy Center, part of the left-leaning Brookings Institution, found that the proposal would amount to a tax increase for the top 80 percent of Americans and a tax cut for the top 20 percent.

When asked about the Democratic guffaws at the bill earlier this month, Carter told DailyMail.com: ‘Our current tax system is a laughing stock, and the IRS is the butt of the joke. The only people who have anything to gain from maintaining a giant IRS are the red tape-loving Washington Democrats who want armed unelected agents who have more control over their pay than you do.