>First it makes us more efficient as a country. It
>eliminates having to pay to have our taxes done which would
>free up millions if not billions of dollars. It also shrinks
>the size of the IRS making the government a little cheaper to
>run.

I believe the savings from eliminating compliance costs would *vastly* outweigh the savings in what it costs to "run" the IRS. There's personal compliance costs, but there's also corporate compliance costs and the cost of doing all the paperwork for one's employees. It would make it *much* simpler for small businesses to handle payroll, and large businesses could release a significant portion of their accounting departments. Those individuals could go do something *productive* that actually benefits society.

(Note that I have nothing against tax accountants - I just liken their job to digging holes and filling them back up again: hard work, but not especially useful in the grand scheme of things.)

One you failed to mention: the fair tax would create a huge incentive for non-citizen residents of the U.S. to actually become citizens. As a non-citizen they would pay the federal sales tax, but would be unable to collect the prebate check. My suspicion is that the issue of illegal immigration would be greatly mitigated if the FairTax were implemented. And best of all, it wouldn't require wasting a ton of money on something as stupid as...oh...a big fence.