(Video above: Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL5) speaks in favor of the Fair Tax)

Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL5) on Thursday urged House Speaker Paul Ryan to bring a “Fair Tax” bill to the floor of the House for a vote. His remarks can be viewed in the video above, or read in the transcript below:

“Mr. Speaker, America’s tax code is so complex as to border on impossible for any one person to understand.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, in 2016, American taxpayers suffered an economic loss of $234 billion from the 1.9 billion hours of time spent trying to figure out and pay their taxes. [source]

Making matters worse, from 1986, when President Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act into law, to today, the tax code has grown from 30,000 to 70,000 pages – more than doubling in size. [source]

Further, the corporate tax rate has skyrocketed to 39.1%, easily claiming the highest rate in the industrialized world.[source]

I cannot emphasize enough the detrimental impact America’s complicated tax code has on our economy, and the burden it creates for taxpayers and job creators alike.

As such, I strongly support Representative Rob Woodall’s FairTax Act, to abolish the federal income tax, employment tax, and estate and gift tax, and replace them with a national sales tax and “prebate” that eliminates the effect of sales taxes on low income families.

Businesses and families know how to best spend their hard-earned money – we need a system that puts power back into the hands of the taxpayer, not government bureaucrats.

The FairTax proposal makes this possible. In particular, it eliminates the income tax and stops the federal government snooping into American citizens’ incomes, savings, and bank accounts, while still producing the revenue needed to fund the federal government.

The FairTax is simpler, thereby saving taxpayers billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars in trying to determine tax liability.

In addition, the FairTax dramatically stimulates America’s economy by eliminating costly income tax and compliance costs for America’s employers, thus cutting the cost of producing American goods and services by roughly 15-20% . . . a huge competitive advantage in an increasingly tough international marketplace. This competitive advantage for American job creators means more jobs and higher incomes for American workers.

Mr. Speaker, I urge you to bring the FairTax legislation to the House floor for a vote to simplify the tax code, return American individual freedom, and grow the economy.”