To create wealth and provide Americans with a good standard of living through good-paying jobs, our nation must have a tax code that encourages  hard work, risk taking and productivity. Sadly, we are burdened with a tax code featuring 60,000 pages of IRS rules and regulations  so complicated that Americans spend several billion hours trying to comply or manipulate the code and about $30 billion  in compliance costs. It has chased millions of jobs away to other nations and has caused trillions of dollars to be moved outside of our economy to avoid being taxed.

Why? The code is designed by Congressmen for Congressmen who use it to secure and acquire power and to reward businesses and industries that fund their campaigns, not for the benefit of the citizens.

One undeniable fact is that our government should not be favoring certain groups over others. We taxpayers deserve a system that is fair, transparent and simple. This is one great aspect of the FairTax which I strongly support.

The Fair Tax ( H.R. 25) has over 60 sponsors in the house. It replaces the entire tax code and IRS with a national sales tax of 23% on new goods and services. It also features a prebate mechanism, providing a monthly check to every single adult or family in the amount of these sales taxes on necessities up to the poverty level. Under the Fair Tax, a single person would receive $188 a month and a married couple with no children $376 a month.

The FairTax broadens out the tax base because now the 10-20 million illegal immigrants are contributing as are the drug dealers and underground economy. Moreover, the FAir Tax encourages all Americans to work hard and start and grow  their own businesses since they will now keep their entire paycheck and gone suddenly are all  federal payroll taxes, corporate taxes, income taxes, and capital gains taxes. Small business owners will start growing and hiring and thrive.  Employees  will keep their entire paycheck and no longer see social security and medicare being deducted from their pay as the Fair Tax will pay for those programs.

Our manufacturing sector will boom once again as the U.S. will be the best place in the world to do business with zero capital gains,corporate  and personal income taxes  so there will no longer be any taxes on wealth  and job creation.

If we are going to solve our national debt crisis and be able to take care of our seniors who will double in size over the next 25 years we are going to have to have a private sector that is booming and is  creating a tremendous amount  of wealth.  The current economy is a mess and the country is going broke. It is insane to hang onto a tax system which makes no sense and is clearly helping destroy our great nation.

Finally, The Fair Tax would take power out of the hands of career politicians and special interest groups and give people control over their money and lives. Freedom, that's what America is supposed to be all about.

Todd Long is running for Congress against Alan Grayson in Florida's new Congressional District 9.