The Optional Flat Tax

RealClearPolitics ^ | July 19, 2007 | Sam Brownback

[gpapa]

People often laugh when I say on the campaign trail that the tax code should be taken behind the barn and killed with a dull axe. In fact, one man in Iowa was so excited by this proposal that he presented me with an axe before I finished my remarks (fittingly, I was speaking in a barn).

There's a reason people welcome my proposal to kill the tax code -- it's a monster of inscrutable complexity, and I say that as a former lawyer who took every tax law class I could.

Today's tax code -- which is sixteen times longer than the Bible -- is unpredictable, manipulative and hinders the economic growth that generates more prosperity for all Americans.

[Martins kid]

Sounds good to me. Americans waste millions of hours filing taxes and maintaining tax records.

[johnthebaptistmoore]

Replacing the present tax system with the Fair Tax is truly the best way to go!

[Nathan Zachary]

"Today's tax code -- which is sixteen times longer than the Bible -- is unpredictable, manipulative and hinders the economic growth that generates more prosperity for all Americans."

64 times longer than the bible if you own business and earn part of your personal income outside the USA. It's a nightmare that will eventually destroy you (like Freddy Kruger) Thank goodness for tax accountants, even if they are geeks.

[snowsislander]

I think we should forget the idea of an income tax, and replace it with a national retail sales tax.

Unfortunately, Senator Brownback wants to continue not only the current income tax snarl, but also introduce a parallel simplified option which will be flat. That's just adding more complication to the same bad idea of taxing income.

And I would caution the Senator that the original income tax implementation under the 16th amendment was very close to flat; as he points out in his article look at what a leviathan it has been transformed into. While I don't think that a consumption tax will stay simple (look at, for instance, Florida's list of odd exemptions to its states sales tax) at least the tax implications are very transparent on each transaction as you pay them then and there.

[TheDon]

It’s amazing that nothing is ever done about the income tax and the IRS.

[MosesKnows]

For individual tax filers, their first $20,000 of income would be excluded from taxation.

This is the part of the flat tax proposals I disagree with. I feel that every income earning person should be a taxpayer. In that way, they have a monetary reason to maintain an interest in how the taxes are spent. The percentage collected for taxes in the $20,000 income example could be quite low but collected nonetheless.

The problem I have with the national sales tax proposals is that any money you have already paid taxes on and saved or invested before the national sales tax is enacted would be taxed again when spent.

In any case, watch out for H.R.2834’s proposed tax increase on savings and pensions. The democrats are out to get more of your money. They need it so they can use it to help you since you couldn’t possibly know how to spent it to help yourself.