Ryan Lovelace has an article on the homepage noting that some Republicans are pushing the FairTax again, and think that push is politically helpful. One thing worth clearing up is the notion that the FairTax would be set at a 23 percent rate. You might think that that means that a $123 purchase would send $100 to the seller and $23 to the federal government. Actually, if the seller gets $100 the federal government would get $30 and the total price would be $130. If we were talking about the FairTax the same way we talk about existing state sales taxes, we’d call that a 30 percent tax rate. FairTaxers prefer noting that the tax would be 23 percent of the total price (30/130 in my example) because that makes for an apples-to-apples comparison to income-tax rates. They have a point there, but calling the FairTax ”a 23 percent national sales tax” can give people a misleading picture of the proposal.

I have written critically about the FairTax in the past: Here’s a response to my criticisms, and my reply to it.