Taxes!

If you didn't know, I currently live in the great State of New Hampshire, the "Live Free or Die" state. New hampshire has one of the lowest tax burdens of any state in the country. Right next door, is Maine. Maine has one of the highest tax burdens in the country. I also work with several people from Maine, and I can not for the life of me figure out why they would pay so much to live there. I spend a lot of time listening to WLOB, talk radio in Maine, and it just reinforces my belief that it's better to live here.
New Hampshire has no income tax, and no sales tax, except for "Hotel and Food" tax. This means that there is sales tax at hotels and restaurants. We do have state and local property tax, but as for income tax, we pay only the Federal tax. This brings me to the reason for this post. As I have said in the past, I am a cop. And though I am not complaining about my salary, we all know that cops are not paid as well as some other professions. However, in my town there is a lot of state road construction, which means construction details, which do pay very well. Keep in mind that I work those in addition to my 40 hours per week on duty
I was having a conversation with a fellow cop, who is single (I am married with two kids). He told me that he does not like to work details all that much, because he ends up working for free. It seems that making extra money causes him to be bumped into a higher tax bracket, and more gets witheld. Meanwhile, I have more deductions, so as a percentage of my pay, my taxes don't go up even if I work 70-80 hrs a week.
This just does not sit well with me. In my view, it is time to get rid of the IRS, and replace the federal income tax with either a flat tax, or, even better, the Fair Tax. This would be a national sales tax, where you would get to take home every penny that you earn, and only pay tax on what you choose to spend. The details are too numerous to write about here, but visit their site. Then, write to your congressmen, and tell them to support it. We will all be better off for it.