Is that a flat 9% TOTAL, or would you add to that the 15.3% Self Employment tax (or the 7.65% if you are a regular employee)?
SS tax is the biggest scam going - and should be abolished. I use to think that allowing us to invest part of it was a good idea. WRONG. Allowing the government to extort it from tax paying citizens (with an ever growing portion of the pie) is not only wrong, it is evil.
And now that my work classifies me as "Self Employed"... I have an even bigger axe to grind.
I am actually now in favor of eliminating ALL income taxes period.
SocSec is another question. I am for privatizing that. Ideally the government would not be in the business of “insurance” at all but, given the sacredness of SocSec-as-it-is I would aim at one thing at a time. Rationalizing SocSec would not have nearly the effect on the economy that a flat low income tax would, though. I paid the full SS tax for a decade and it is a bummer. With that the highest total income tax is 55+% or so. That is way out of line for a nation built on free market principles.