Jack Kingston: “Yes. I want to point out something about the national sales tax. I know England, Britain, has a high sales tax, but they…”

“Yes. I want to point out something about the national sales tax. I know England, Britain, has a high sales tax, but they exempt groceries from it and children's clothes, among other things. So we can, for the seniors or those who could adversely be affected by a national sales tax, we could have certain deductions for them. There again, we get into a deduction kind of problem, but it still would not complicate it for the taxpayer as much as it would for those collecting it. That could be a problem in itself. I want to give the gentleman some more statistics, though, about how complicated the tax system is now. These figures came out from the office of the gentleman from Ohio, who has been working, as the gentleman knows, on the National Commission for Restructuring the IRS. Just to read some things they found, last year only one in five calls to the IRS customer service hotline got through. How many constituents does the gentleman have who call him for a fairly simple tax question, they call the gentleman from Pennsylvania because they know he can get an answer from the IRS and they cannot? That is very common.”