Saturday, January 26, 2008

Dave Ramsey, the Presidential Campaign and Taxes

I have been hearing a number of people (even had visitors searching the search engines on this topic) asking who Dave Ramsey was endorsing for President. So, I decided to make a call to Brentwood, TN and ask the source directly.

Beth Tallent, Director of Public Relations, said that Ramsey, typically stays out of politics unless it deals directly with finance.

When asked, what his opinion of Mike Huckabee's Fair Tax was, she said that he hasn't addressed Huckabee's Fair Tax, although he has addressed the "Fair Tax" long before Mike Huckabee ever was a candidate. She then promised to get me a quote from Ramsey on the issue.

Below is Dave Ramsey's thoughts on the Fair Tax:

“I love the idea of the Fair Tax. The beauty of it is that by in large it’s a voluntary tax. If you don’t want to pay the tax, don’t buy something. I bought a car not long ago, and there’s a tax on that car when we record the title in the state of Tennessee where I live. And if I didn’t want to pay the tax, I didn’t buy the car. But when I bought the car, I knew the tax went with it. And that’s part of the thing. But it’s a voluntary tax and I like that part of it.”


So there you have it. No endorsement from Ramsey, but he does seem to like the idea of the Fair Tax.



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go ahead share your thoughts with me now.



1 comment:

  1. In better times, the Fair Tax would be a great improvement over income tax because of that voluntary component.

    If it were enacted right now, the knee jerk reaction to a 30% sales tax would be to buy as little as possible to take advantage of the voluntary nature of the tax.

    This would speed us into a recession.

    Things would snowball up from there. People would lose jobs or be in fear of losing their jobs so they would buy less. The government would collect less taxes so it would borrow more. This would increase inflation. Costs would rise and so would the amount of tax per item. People would cut down on buying and so on.

    If it was done when the economy was strong and could handle the hiccup, things would probably work out very nicely. Once people were used to the idea of paying a third extra for every item and having no income tax taken out of their checks, purchasing would resume at its normal level.

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