After a tumultuous start to its term, the Republican-led House is starting on its agenda items. House Republicans are going to vote to slash funding for the IRS and repeal the federal income tax.
However, the measure doesn’t have the support to pass in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and the White House has already opposed the bill.
Georgia Republican Rep Buddy Carter brought forth the Fair Tax Act, saying he wants to remove the need for the IRS entirely by simplifying the tax code.
The bill would abolish the national income tax, payroll tax, and estate tax and replace it with a single national sales tax on the purchase of goods and services at 23 percent on gross payments.
So there would still be taxes.
It also calls for the 16th amendment to be repealed. It gives congress the right to collect tax on incomes.
The move to abolish the IRS comes following a pledge to repeal the nearly $80 billion approved by Congress last year.
House Republicans this week voted to obliterate funding for the IRS, as it was part of a promise by the newly-elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy to repeal the money approved by Congress last year.
McCarthy made extraordinary concessions to win over a small bloc of far-right Republican holdouts who blocked his speaker bid.
The bill passed along party lines but will die after leaving the House. It rescinds tens of billions allocated to the agency over the next decade through the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August.
President Biden “adamantly opposes” the bill, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said, adding that it would “shift the federal tax burden onto the American middle class and working people.”
But while there is a chance it wins support in the House, it is expected to have a near-zero percent chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled Senate. And Biden said he would veto anything like it if it did land on his desk.
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