Jay Honeck wrote:
Bring on flat tax. I'll take my chances.


Amen, brother -- but not because it will lower my tax rate.
.lots of stuff from Jay snipped.

I believe we started this out many years ago with this kind of
simplicity in mind. The tax structure was fairly straightforward after
the forming of the country (well, after we stole a bunch of land from
the American Indians). Then, some bright persons figured out ways to
avoid the simple schemes set in place. Also, somewhere along the line,
we were all asleep at the wheel when the 10% tax cap was repealed. More
complex rules were set in place to close the newfound loopholes. New
ways to invest and make money sprang up. The "people's" appetite for
more govt. programs went wildly out of control.

This vicious cycle of new ways to invest and make money followed closely
by financial people figuring out new ways to avoid taxation fueled what
we have today. This was aggravated by the notion that government should
be the funding source for lots of things the framing fathers of this
land likely did not imagine. One man's perfectly reasonable program is
another man's pork.

It is tempting to streamline it all and leave it at that. The result
would likely be a tax system that is incredibly easy for the well off
(defined as anyone making more money than me) to cheat the system and
pay little to no tax (if you assume that is not the case already). Thus
starting the whole escalation once again. And this does not address the
sister demon: skyrocketing spending. Any tax reform would benefit
greatly from less pressure to raise so much money in the first place
(can you say: presidential line item veto? I knew you could).

So, perhaps a simple tax structure coupled with some mechanism for
review using plain language and plain folks. No ideas on how the
mechanics might work (I outsourced my govt. decisions to my
congresscritter).

Have fun hashing this out.
Mike