I greatly enjoyed your column in today's Citizen Opinion and I agree with you on every thing except the sales tax issue. I would not mind a national sales tax to replace the income tax, if there was a foolproof way of doing it. The way it is being done now is an abomination.

The reason I am so vehemently against sales taxes is the way these taxes are collected. It makes crooks and criminals out of the average small business owner. What would you say of an establishment that has gross annual sales of almost $400,000 yet turns in less than $4,000 of the collected sales taxes?

Roughly 80 percent of the sales taxes that were or should have been collected and turned in to the state of Georgia fell through the cracks in this case. There is no agency or even a way, as far as I know, that can make certain that this can not happen.

Ever notice, in restaurants for example, when you pay the bill including the required sales tax, the bill is not even rung up on the cash register?

No one wants to do the tax collecting, unless of course, there is something in it for them. And this is how we make crooks out of ordinary, hard-working and otherwise decent people.

Please do not make the words “sales tax” acceptable, or the next SPLOST will become a shoo-in and put even more of our tax dollars into the pockets of unscrupulous and dishonest people.

F.J. Adam
Fritza2tt@worldnet.att.net

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