By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 15, 2020 | Much of our time these days we spend lots of time hosting visits from political candidates, so that we can evaluate their campaign, and help determine who GwinnettForum will endorse.
So far we’ve seen 110 candidates this year, the most ever. It’s enjoyable to learn about these people, and the ideas they offer. On October 9, GwinnettForum will present its 2020 endorsements for the General Election. That will be just three days before Early Voting starts.
Read not only the endorsements, but be sure to read the candidate’s answers to six questions we are putting to them. This will be the candidate speaking directly to you, the voters, without any editing on our part. This is presented without cost to the candidates who spend 30 minutes with us. If you find a candidate who does not have answers to these questions, that simply means he or she did not visit with us this campaign.
Allen Buckley of Smyrna is a Georgia attorney and CPA with over 30 years working with the federal tax systems. He is one of 21 people seeking the unexpired Senate term of Johnny Isakson.
Buckley
Buckley has run for high office before as a libertarian. He polled 134,000 votes (3.4 percent) in a 2008 race for the Senate, which Saxby Chambless won. Financial issues bother him, and he writes letters to the editor. He says that the government is not working on a long-term basis, and the Fed is printing money, the Treasury is borrowing, and the debt spiral is out of control.
He based his current campaign on a much simpler national tax system that uses algebra to produce balanced budgets in years the U.S. is not experiencing a recession or worse (or just coming out of a recession). The proposal is based on a proposal in a 2017 Tax Notes article by Buckley titled “Eliminating the Income Tax . . . While Balancing the Budget.” He visited with us the other day.
Buckley said: “Over the course of three years, I worked on analyzing different options for a better tax system for the U.S. Ultimately I came up with the foregoing proposal. It’s not perfect, but it makes everyone pay something, is reasonably progressive, and forces the politicians in D.C. to do what state and local politicians must do—i.e. balance the budget.
“None of my fellow candidates in the race have come up with anything regarding a replacement, let alone better, tax system. We need to fix the nation’s finances as soon as possible following the pandemic’s end, instead of running significant deficits each year like we did for 2012 through 2019.”
Mr. Buckley’s “Save Tomorrow” campaign is about living for today and tomorrow, instead of living for today to the detriment of tomorrow. The focus is on doing things to make tomorrow as good as or even better than today, by acting now to address the nation’s financial challenges and confronting global warming in a practical way.
Buckley proposes eliminating the income tax altogether while changing the FICA tax rate from 7.65 percent to x percent and adding an x percent Value Added Tax. The self-employment tax (SECA) rate would be 2x percent. These percentage rates are flexible, and would be adjusted to balance the budget in non-recession (or worse) years. X balances the budget. (A 14 percent rate for each tax (28 percent for SECA tax) would roughly have been sufficient to balance the budget in 2013.) Under this proposal, the corporate and individual income taxes are completely eliminated.
There’s more in his plan, but too much to cover here. Mr. Buckley can be reached for comment at (404) 610-1936. Mr. Buckley’s campaign website is www.buckleyforsenate.org.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Follow Us