[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 42 (Thursday, April 10, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1411-H1412]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                A NATIONAL DEBATE ON THE INCOME TAX CODE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TAUZIN. Mr. Speaker, I am also joined today by a friend of mine, 
the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Dan Schaefer], who will interact with 
me in this 5 minutes and perhaps even ask unanimous consent for his own 
time.
  We are pleased today to announce to the House and to the American 
public that as tax day approaches, as April 15 bears down upon us as 
the date upon which the tax man cometh again into our lives, we are 
preparing to begin the national debate on the issue of whether or not 
it is time for us in America to consider ripping the income Tax Code 
out by its roots, repealing the U.S. income Tax Code in its entirety, 
along with the IRS, and replacing the entire thing with a simple, 
straightforward national retail consumption tax.
  On April 15, the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Dan Schaefer] and I 
will be joined by other Members of this body, not necessarily as 
Members of Congress but as citizens of this country, and we will be 
joined by many other citizens who will join with us in Boston Harbor 
for a symbolic reenactment of the Boston Tea Party.
  We will be in that harbor on an 18th-century style ship, and we will 
symbolically put the U.S. income Tax Code into a beautiful box labeled 
``Boston tea.'' And we will ceremoniously dump it into that harbor. We 
are doing it, by the way, with the proper permitting authority, because 
to leave that income Tax Code in the harbor would surely be a bad 
example of pollution. But we are going to do this demonstration along 
with many other Americans to begin this debate.
  Is it time to get rid of this income Tax Code that is hurting 
Americans and hurting American jobs and debilitating the U.S. economy 
and replacing it with a simple straightforward consumption tax?
  The debate will begin on April 15. The ceremony we have in Boston 
Harbor will hopefully be the start of that debate.
  What essentially is wrong with the U.S. income Tax Code? The stories 
of IRS agents snooping into private businesses, the stories of 4 
billion dollars' worth of computers that do not work are just the 
beginning.

[[Page H1412]]

  The IRS code punishes you for earning income, punishes you for saving 
money, punishes you for investing money, punishes you for leaving money 
to your children, whether you are alive or in death, through 
inheritance taxes, punishes you when you buy anything made in America, 
because everything made in America carries an IRS tax on it of about 14 
to 15 percent, and rewards you only for doing one thing, for buying 
foreign products.
  What kind of a Tax Code is that? I suggest that a Tax Code replacing 
the income tax that would once and for all put an end to inheritance 
taxes, put an end to taxes on investments and earnings and income and 
replace it with a simple one-time tax on consumption of both foreign 
and domestic products, equalizing for the first time since 1913 the 
taxes on foreign products with American products, is the right way to 
go.
  We will begin this debate historically in Boston Harbor. My colleague 
and friend, who I am pleased to yield to at this time, Dan Schaefer, 
and I will be leading the charge.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Dan 
Schaefer].
  Mr. DAN SCHAEFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very 
much for yielding to me.
  I went back into the 1913 Tax Code and, as the gentleman from 
Louisiana [Mr. Tauzin] knows, we pulled that out. That was the first 
time that we really had an income tax where you had to file. It was 
three pages. One was your withholding. One was your deductions, and the 
other was how you paid your taxes.
  Now, as people will see when we go to Boston Harbor, we have better 
than 8,000 pages of Tax Codes, regulations, rules, laws, et cetera, 
that if you take your taxes to 10 or 15 different CPA's, they will all 
come out with a new number on what you owe the Federal Government or 
what you are going to get back. I think it is time that we finally have 
decided that this is wrong for the American people.
  One of the most intrusive taxes that we have is the inheritance tax. 
We are planning to get rid of inheritance taxes, capital gains taxes, 
gift taxes, all excise taxes, unless they are tied to a trust fund, and 
replace it with a very simple consumption tax.

                          ____________________