[anigbrowl]

- basic rebate: every person gets a rebate corresponding to a base amount of tax paid; this is intended to ensure poverty-stricken folks are not taxed out of subsistence (HHOS). This is like earned income credit but it’s streamlined so the bureaucracy is minimized and there is no magical cutoff. It’s optional so progressive types can refuse it.

How are you going to minimize the bureaucracy? Poor people are still going to have document all their income/assets to qualify for a rebate, richer people who hate taxes will channel their income through some sort of trust while claiming that their designer suits are owned by the trust and administrators are required to wear them like any other employee.

Hedge funds serve a purpose or they wouldn’t exist

As does Fentanyl, but I bet you don't think it's a good idea to sprinkle it on your cornflakes. As does fentanyl, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to sprinkle it on your cornflakes.

[no-s]

> Poor people are still going to have document all their income/assets to qualify for a rebate,

nope, no qualifications, no means test. Only one rebate per person, same amount for each person, computed from poverty line statistics. Children too, legal guardian collects.

> As does Fentanyl, but I bet you don't think it's a good idea to sprinkle it on your cornflakes.

I’m not sure how to construe your analogy. I would agree its inappropriate to eat hedge fund participants for breakfast, but OTOH Fentanyl does have a legitimate use even if some might abuse it as a cereal topping. Perhaps you should clarify your original point instead.

Fair Tax isn’t really intended to address wealth disparity and the outsize influence of the wealthy. The Fair Tax asserts the defects of the Income Tax outweigh the virtues, particularly WRT to transgressions against individual rights, costs vs benefits, and exceeding limited government. It's an alternative tax system. The macroeconomic impact is debatable, static analysis is probably an error due to the outsize influence of perverse tax incentives.

[anigbrowl]

no qualifications, no means test. Only one rebate per person, same amount for each person

Ah, so by 'base amount of tax paid' you mean averaged across the population? A rebate generally implies a refund of prior payment, so I found your summary confusing.

I’m not sure how to construe your analogy.

That just because something has a purpose does not imply it is a net good. In general I think high concentrations of wealth are bad on a systemic level, like too much sugar leading to diabetes. So I'm not sure that the capital allocation performed by hedge funds is a necessity for an economy to operate sustainably.

[no-s]

> A rebate generally implies a refund of prior payment, so I found your summary confusing.

Sorry, it is a “pre-bate”, intended to offset the first x dollars of tax that would be paid on “necessities”, determined by some poverty line/CPI related computation performed periodically. No means test or qualification except citizenship. Don’t recall if there was any effort to address non-citizens that were not dependents.

> In general I think high concentrations of wealth are bad on a systemic level, like too much sugar leading to diabetes.

I can’t quite dis-agree with you, but I’m not certain how to address it. Perhaps we should just have rules/criteria regarding breaking up concentrations of wealth/power or splitting up giant organizations. Meanwhile this happens under the current tax system, thus orthogonal WRT the objectives of FairTax.