In addition to the concerns pointed out by the President’s Commission and those Howard notes, there are two other issues: phoney simplicity and federalism. The so-called allure of the Fair Tax has always been the potential for eliminating the IRS, because it would simply (sic) be the imposition of the 23 or 46 or whatever percent national sales tax on all good and services—taxes, of course, to be collected by states, lest the federal government be required to create the FRS (Fair Revenue Service). But there are some 750 different state and local sales tax systems currently in the United States. Is the intention here to create a 751st? Who will determine and define what this is? Who will be in charge of enforcement? To Governor Huckaby’s credit, he has always been a strong proponent of simplifying the mystifying miasma of different and conflicting state and local sales tax systems to bring the sales tax into the 21st century and to overcome the Constitutional nexus discrepancies. A national sales tax would force the issue and mayhap have a consequential beneficial impact for states and local governments. Any such benefit would be far more than offset, however, at the concept of federal taxation of essential state and local government purchases and services—a concept antithetical to any of those thoughtful Philadelphia discussions of the founding fathers, but potentially reverberating into significant pressures on local property taxes and state sales taxes. Because, of course, in our federalism piggy-backing of state and local corporate and individual income taxes, elimination of the federal income tax would, perforce, pull the rug out from under existing state and local income tax systems. The Tax Doctor