A number of the second-tier Republican presidential candidates have made supportive comments about a national sales tax; the idea is the centerpiece of Huckabee's campaign.

A number of the second-tier Republican presidential candidates have made supportive comments about a national sales tax; the idea is the centerpiece of Huckabee's campaign. But none of the top-tier candidates is touching the issue--and for very good reasons. If the Republican nominee adopted the issue, he would quickly find that he was talking about very little else in the fall of 2008. There are too many possible lines of attack, and it would take too long to explain the issues. Voters understandably distrust politicians who say that they are going to impose a new tax on them but that they will come out ahead. If, against very steep odds, the sales tax became law, what would it accomplish? A 30 percent retail-sales tax--which is what proponents are suggesting--would cause massive evasion through wholesale purchases. That is why every country with a high sales tax has converted it into a value-added tax levied at every stage of production. This type of tax system tends to hide the cost of government and makes taxes easy to raise. The claim that the sales tax would abolish the IRS is also an exaggeration: There would still be an intrusive tax-collection regime, as there must be for the government to continue to raise trillions of dollars, as the sales-taxers say it would. All in all, there are more risks than rewards to the idea, which is why you will not be hearing about it next fall.