This was one of few questions that all candidates answered that could be left in a single youtube video, and in it the candidates discuss the Fair Tax and their views on it.
John Oxendine starts this one off, as the question was directly specifically to him, and actually opens with a thought I completely agree with (again with me saying nice things about him! ICK!) about the need for a truly 21st century tax code, not one that was written in a bygone era that will never be returned to. But then he specifically says he would leave in some exemptions – meaning that the system he proposes STILL would not be truly “fair”. He also flat out says that there will be no drop in taxation under his plan. But we already knew this from a couple of months ago, when he never addressed cutting anything while proposing several new spending programs.
Austin Scott asks to respond to the question, and basically eviscerates the Fair Tax concept using the GSU study I’ve already discussed here. Scott again calls for a debate on the Fair Tax, and correctly points out that every state without an income tax has a higher state property tax than Georgia. Thus, large property owners – and there are quite a few of those in Georgia – pay a disproportionately higher tax burden, as they are having to pay BOTH the higher sales tax caused by the Fair Tax AND the higher property taxes indirectly caused by the Fair Tax. Scott says that having higher property taxes because of a switch to a sales tax is unacceptable to him as a Governor or as a taxpayer. He then notes that whatever you pay in State income tax is deductible on your Federal income tax, but that this would not be so if either or both switched to a sales tax. Meaning yet ANOTHER way you wind up paying MORE tax with the “Fair” Tax.
McBerry opens up with a nativist rant blaming the problems on “those illegals” who are “not paying their fair share”. He then notes all the tourists that would also be “added” to the tax rolls – even though these tourists ALREADY pay sales tax in Georgia when they are here. In other words, he advocates INCREASING the tax burden on tourists, which will lead to LESS tourism in this State! He then starts in on another of his black helicopter anti-Federal government theories. Here, he talks about one of his “States’ Rights Bills” that called the “State Authority in Federal Tax Funds Act” that would have Georgians pay all of their Federal taxes to the State of Georgia, and then the Governor and General Assembly would decide what to actually pass on to the Federal government. This was actually the very statement that led to the question that I wanted to ask during the forum but was not given a chance to, and which McBerry ducked when I tried to ask him afterwards. Something that missed my attention here as I was filming is that he flat out admits that Bobby Franklin, who barely 72 hours after this event called for outright war against the US government, is sponsoring this bill. McBerry states that this is the way things we done for the first 100 years of the United States of America, but he is actually a couple dozen years off – it was done that way for 80 years or so, and led directly to the American Civil War. But hey, Ray wants to start the Second American Civil War, so it is no wonder that he would conveniently ignore this fact.
Eric Johnson speaks for about 30 seconds or so and says that he favors lowering the income tax while raising the consumption tax to try to achieve a more fair balance.
