We need a Flat Tax

Fire of Liberty

While I was visiting my good friend Jason Crosby's blog Midwest Ramblings I discovered that those wacky accountants at the IRS sent him a letter saying he owed them $45,000 dollars in taxes because they claim a client payed him $96,000 for some illustration work (Even though it was really on $960). While Jason's problems is one out of the many examples of American taxpayers getting scary letters from the IRS who claim that the taxpayer owes them some G-d awful amount of money, it still shows you that this behemoth and its 17,000 pages of tax codes needs to be pared down a notch or two via Congress passing a more simplified tax system that has smaller rates that makes it easier on the taxpayers come tax time. Now while we won't ever get Neal Boortz and Rep. John Linder's (R-GA) "Fair Tax,"(See their book The FairTax Book) which calls for a national sales tax and the elimination of IRS, passed on Capitol Hill anytime soon, we could eliminate the problems with the IRS by pushing through the Flat Tax that sets out one set rate for all tax payers pay. I'd say that we'd make life a lot easier on the American public if we gave them a tax system in which all they had to have is their W-2 and a set rate on a 3x5 rather than having a nerve racking time in which you have to decipher technical mumbo-jumbo in the tax forms of today.

Now folks might say that such a policy is unfair to the lower incomes but in fact it's a way of poor folks rising out of their problems and not have to worry about bumping into a higher tax bracket as they move up the income ladder. Even better, they wouldn't have to worry about going to H&R block and paying someone to run them through the tax gauntlet before April 15th. I'd say that it's about time that folks in America start pushing a more simplified tax system like the Flat Tax in an effort to free us from the nightmare of tax time and let us get on with our life. Now while we haven't seen the White House pushing forward a Flat Tax system, we're seeing a movement within Congress by Senator Sam Brownback(R-KS) that is calling for a Flat Tax trial balloon to be launched within Washington D.C. to demonstrate how beneficial that a flat tax is for poor folks living in the high tax inner city of our nation's capital. Here's what Senator Brownback had to say to NewsMax.com about the his flat tax proposal in D.C.:

"If people are given a chance,"” he said, "they will abandon the current burdensome system."”

The District, Brownback said, would provide a great real-life experiment with the flat tax.

"Doing it in the District,"” he told the Washington Times, "would give a real-world venue where we could witness what it could do for the country."

Brownback believes a flat tax would have wondrous affects on the District economy.

"A flat federal income tax would create more economic activity and jobs in the District, which would enhance the District'’s ability to raise revenue while actually lowering its own high local taxes."

If the leadership of D.C. would allow such a policy to be applied much like they did with vouchers, they'd discover that the taxpayers would see a dynamic growth in their income via a low tax regime. So for the sake of low income earners and the sake of people like my friend Jason, let's simplify our tax system to something like the Flat Tax.

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Also check out this editorial in the Washington Times on Senator Brownback's flat tax prposal as well as Steve Forbes' book Flat Tax to learn more on this dynamic tax proposal.