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[Fix the code, flatten the tax, use what others have succeeded at, and make it better.]

That wouldn't bother me if we could really 'fix' it. By that I mean remove the ability of Congress to ever change it, create exceptions, loopholes and exemptions, start it at the first dollar of income, and remove the fallacy that businesses can pay a tax without passing it along in higher prices to customers. Oh, and find a way to tax the imports just like the producing companies are taxing our exports by adding the VAT to them.

I don't know of any Flat Income Tax proposal that offers to do all that. Usually, they want to give people a big fat exemption, continue to tax people a second time by taxing businesses, and giving trade advantages to foreign producers by not rebating the business taxes on exports.

If you look around the world a bit, there is no example of a "fairtax" scheme working for more than a year or two before chaos erupts. Flat Tax plans have been working successfully for upwards of 60 years (Hong Kong) where the government has been severely limited by law on what, and how much it can spend first, then how everybody ( very high compliance ) gladly pays their fair share.

Flat Taxation neither rewards or punishes, it it simply the reasonable cost of day-to-day life, security, and non-interference in the affairs of business. I can't even comprehend 180 million people becoming registered federal government tax collection agents.

Just state and local tax collection is bad enough, notwithstanding if I get lied to regarding tax exempt status, I pay the tax and a hefty fine while the schmuck skates away.

I pay sales tax in advance on uncollected debts, and get treated like a criminal when I ask for my money back. If I collect on a bad debt, I owe the sales tax on the full amount of the original sale, not on the pittance I collected after legal fees and expenses.

None of the FT's can tell you how they propose to stage a mass re-education of the public sector to change the wrong headed thinking that creates onerous bureaucratic rules like these.

The rules and regs will spin and twist and get perverted by the powerful to retain their positions.

I joked with someone that all the proposed "registered collector" numbers will begin with the number "666" and I thought the poor guy was going to have a stroke right there.

The only thing that changes with a Flat Tax other than a lower tax bill sent in with a post card, is 55,000 pages of tax code become waste paper.