Jim Bennett is the National Secretary and member of the National Board of Americans For Fair Taxation®, which sponsors the FairTax® and educates the public about the advantages of taxing consumption over income. The FairTax® initiative is non-partisan and single-issue.
Jim is a Deputy Attorney General in the Treasury, Bankruptcy and Debt Recovery Section of the Division of Law. Jim joined the Attorney General’s office in 1999. His activities for the FairTax® are unrelated to his work.
Jim graduated from Lafayette College in 1970 and New York Law School in 1973.
Prior to joining the Division of Law, Jim was a Captain in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Army in Germany. He joined Gerling-Konzern Allgemeine Versicherungs-A.G., an insurance conglomerate in Cologne, Germany, in 1977, where he worked in the commercial liability department. Gerling transferred Jim to New York, where he became a Vice President. Jim joined Colonia Versicherung-A.G. in New York in 1986, where he served as Vice President and General Counsel until 1990. Jim then had a private law practice in Summit, New Jersey prior to joining the Division of Law.
In addition to his national role, Jim is the FairTax® Regional Director for the tristate area of Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey and a member of the New Jersey board. He has been involved in FairTax® since 2005 and has appeared on radio and television and on panels. Recently Jim took part in a Murray Sabrin documentary entitled “Income Tax: Root of All Evil or Necessary Evil.” Jim lectures frequently on the FairTax®.
ABOUT THE FAIRTAX®
With growing interest in Congress in tax reform, Deputy Attorneys General would benefit from learning about a federal proposal that is garnering serious consideration and could provide job opportunity at the state level.
The FairTax® is a bill in Congress, HR25, S155 (68 sponsors in the House, 6 sponsors in the Senate) that, if enacted, would replace federal business and individual income taxes, payroll and self-employment taxes, and estate, gift and generation-skipping taxes. These taxes would be replaced with a national tax on all services and new tangible goods sold at retail in the United States to a consumer. There would no longer be any federal income or payroll tax on businesses. The tax provides relief for consumption up to the poverty level. The Internal Revenue Service would be phased out over a three-year period. The FairTax® is designed to raise the same amount of revenue as the eliminated taxes it replaces.
This course would be of interest to New Jersey Deputy Attorneys General because the legislation, if enacted, would pass the administration of most of today’s federal taxes to the states.