"Tax Refunds"???...

...or is it a tax advance? Watch out and read the fine print closely. This $800 per taxpayer/$1,600 per family check that is being called a tax refund may have a dumbed-down title so most of society can understand it. This check may be an advance on the taxes you will be refunded/liable for the 2008 year. I'm only saying this because I am not yet clear on whether this will be a free and clear check (other than having to report it as income) or if it will be basically an interest free loan on your taxes. You're going to have to do your own research here. I'm still trying to find out myself.

So, the idea behind the refund checks (we'll just call 'em that for now) is to "boost" the economy. So they are going to give the boost a $150 BILLION dollar boost by doing this. Wanna know how the economy will get a bigger boost EVERY DAY? FAIR TAX! Let me just throw a few notes your way.

-Total cost of complying with current tax code is about $1.1 BILLION per DAY. Roughly $400 Billion per year. If this was not being spent on complying with our stupid tax code, where would it end up? The economy.

-So they want to help business owners put money back into the growth of their business. Well, what about the roughly $12 TRILLION dollars being sent off of our shores. "Offshore" investments. That could be money brought back here if the tax code is simplified to the Fair Tax. Basically, our tax code scares away $12 TRILLION from our economy.

The Fair Tax would be an easier, less convoluted solution to this stuff. They wouldn't have to "boost" the economy by sending every tax payer a check because the economy would already have that money in it.

Oh yeah...and the Democrats are trying to make this out to be against the poor...big surprise huh? The refunds are supposed to go to all "tax payers". Even if a poor person has a job making VERY little and pays no taxes, they still pays into Social Security. The D's are saying this isn't fair to them. Their logic (ha ha...I made a funny) is that the poor are still paying into "the tax system". Well, SS is NOT a tax so sorry, your bucket doesn't hold water. It's supposed to be money that comes back to us. So what are the D's saying? They are either saying that 1) we are NOT going to get our SS back because it's going freakin bankrupt or 2) they think the poor people deserve $800 each when they didn't even pay into the tax system. I think they are saying both.

Whatever...I'm going to move my money to Hong Kong and then buy a nice little house on an island in the Caribbean.