Watching the final Presidential debate last night, and listening again about "The Plumber" and his tax questions for Obama the other day, which led to a whole series of exchanges between the candidates over tax rates for various income levels, defining "rich", who benefits and who doesn't, and yadda, yadda, yadda.
Anyway, it's only gotten me to thinking again about the idea of a flat tax. What ever happened with the national discussion on that? I think it's been 5 or 6 years since I've really heard any high level debate on the subject. For what I knew, and thought back then, I really felt strongly that this might be the way to go. I don't recall who the proponents were, but I think one of them was Rep. Dick Armey and I remember him talking about a number of 17%, as a level which would (at that time) have been the equivalent of all the tax revenue currently being collected across the various rates and incomes. Boy, could I live with that!
Of course, this would require that an income tax be imposed upon millions of low-income people who currently don't pay any. It would also mean that thousands of wealthy folks lose their various loop-holes that typically allow them to pay a lot less than 17%! Still, I just see this as such a common sense approach, and ultimately so simple. We can still have appropriate deductions on various things as we do now, but think of how simplified the system could be. And ultimately, I think, a lot more fair. You make $10,000 a year, the Fed takes $1,700 of it. You make $1,000,000 a year, and they take $170,000. Period. What's wrong with that picture?
Almost no one disagrees that our tax system today is screwed up and needs a serious overhauling. I would like to us start thinking "flat" again. Simple and fair. Don't those words just sound so good?
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