Simplifying the tax code will only increase, greatly, the number of persons on the dole. Think of the 10’s of thousands of people who will be out of work.
So, a base tax of say 10 or 15 percent sounds good at the outset. But, then is will have to be increased to 20 or 30 percent to pay for all those new welfare recipients.
The number on government assistance is high because the current mess of a tax code promotes it. I’d say it has the opposite effect. If you could cancel the current system completely and replace it with an improved one, the numbers of assistance would plummet. The current system encourages dependency. We’d be better with a society that encourages work and reduces reliance on government.
Today, it’s too easy to play class warfare and get votes by having ‘someone else’ pay for it. If a bigger government means a higher tax rate for each individual, all of a sudden we see different voting patterns. States already operate much more this way where sale and property taxes affect everyone. We see a lot more Republican governors in states like Wisconsin, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania because voters own interests are often met by a lower tax burden and more retrained government. At the Federal level, it’s completely different...and those states mentioned rarely if ever vote for the Republican candidate offering better fiscal policy.
This is largely a pipe dram because I don’t ever see getting massive reform of the Federal tax code...there are too many grubby hands in the pot.