2. Will never happen
There are so many ways to calculate "profit," never mind the myriad ways to calculate inventory.
A consumption tax is the most transparent and simple you could hope for, but what would happen is we would keep all the other taxes and just add a consumption tax on top of them all.
The only way to change anything is to nuke Washington when Ubama is giving a speech to both chambers of congress.
somehow you have to take the entire group of leeches living off the income tax system and demonstrate how a new system would be better for them. Short of that it will take a depression of mammoth proportions to change direction.