"Fifth District Rep. Virgil H. Goode’s sponsorship of the “Fair Tax Act of 2007” will be an issue in his re-election contest next year, promises a Democratic challenger who calls the tax legislation fairest to the very wealthy and unfair to the middle class.

David Shreve, an Albemarle County historian, said Monday that the “Fair Tax” bill sponsored by Goode and more than 60 other House Republicans would impose a national sales tax that would hit most middle-class taxpayers harder than it would tax the rich. He called the bill regressive because the rich would pay lower percentages of their income than everyday purchasers of goods and services.

Shreve is one of three Democrats vying for the Democratic Party nomination in the spring to oppose Goode next November, said 5th District Democratic Chairman Fred Hudson of Free Union.

Tom Perriello, an Albemarle County resident who has worked in Asia and Africa and founded a Catholic relief agency, and Brydon Jackson of Pittsylvania County, a retired state trooper working as a Chatham businessman, are the other two Democrats competing with Shreve for the nomination, Hudson said.

Democrats plan to pick Goode’s opponent at a convention likely to be held in May, Hudson said.

Shreve, who has a doctorate in economic history from Louisiana State University, said the “Fair Tax” measure purposefully carries a deceptive name.

“The ‘Fair Tax’ is in that breed of political initiative like the ‘Clear Skies’ initiative,” which could more realistically be named “the polluters’ bill of rights,” Shreve said.

“The Republicans proposed this back in the 1930s and Franklin Delano Roosevelt shot it down. He called it the ‘last word on foolishness,’” Shreve said. “The less money you make, the higher percentage you pay as a percentage of your income.”The legislation would repeal the income tax, abolish the Internal Revenue Service and substitute a national sales tax of 23 percent, which even with a rebate’s relative advantage to the poor would be a boon to the richest Americans, Shreve said.

Goode said the rebate, called a “prebate,” of $1,200 per year per person would help iron out any regression in the sales tax legislation.

“I am sponsoring it to advance the cause,” said Goode, who said his goal is to make the tax structure simpler and fairer.

“I think it needs some changes to it,” Goode said. “I do not want a prebate to go on the [basis of child custody payments]. I do not want the prebate to go to anyone other than U.S. citizens living in the United States,” he added.

He disagreed with Shreve about the Democrat’s characterization of the bill as regressive and “trickle-down.”

“Mr. Shreve and I disagree on immigration as well,” Goode said.

The proposed tax would add a federal tax rate of 23 percent to 30 percent to the purchase of a house, Shreve said, meaning that a $200,000 home could cost closer to $260,000.

A problem with the bill applying the tax to the purchase of a home “is a valid point,” Goode said, “but when you sell a home you wouldn’t pay any tax on it.”

Shreve said the tax “would put a very large tax cut to a small number of very well-off” Americans.

“It’s a symbolic issue. I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” Shreve said of the tax proposal." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, September 18, 2007)