You mentioned where the conversation needed to go... and I agree with you... but it isn't going there, is it?
Here, in the run-up to the 2012 general election, we have GOP candidates discussing issues and making and taking positions that I think are unrealistic at best... and damaging to the conservative effort as a whole, worst-case.
In order to appeal to Tea Party conservatives, we have Perry and others taking real, solid (and ultimately unmovable) positions on the US tax code. Specifically, whether or not a flat tax is something we should shoot for. Perry promises its simpler. Gingrich wants it to be an "option" for those that choose to take it. Cain seems to be focused on the "9-9-9" to the point nothing else is spoken of.
Please, people... it isn't going to happen. EVER.
It isn't simpler... and that is coming from someone that supports the flat tax idea! It just isn't.
Look, even with our progressive tax system... where does the complicated portion of the job lay? Not with figuring what percentage of taxes you owe... you take your income and match it to a percentage on a list, and find the corresponding tax amount owed. That's actually as simple as we are going to get, if you ask me.
The complications start when one is asked to determine what your "income" is. That is where one finds the deductions, credits, allowances, proportional expenses, and other such mitigating factors that effect what the specific "income" for one year has been.
Would that change in a flat tax system? I doubt it very much. One would still find loopholes, arguments and costs that they feel should "reduce" their income, and thus reduce what they owe in taxes, and thus complicate what is being promised as a "simpler" means of determining and collecting tax revenues.
Gingrich wants Americans to do their taxes TWICE, and pick the cheaper means of paying... how is THAT simpler? Cain wants to take the Laffer curve to the opposite extreme that most liberals do, and reduce the flat tax to factors of 9%... which would equal a huge tax cut to anyone making more than $26,000 a year, but increase more than 40% of the country's tax bill by 9%. THAT is not the sort of campaign promise that is going to get him elected in a general election cycle, I can tell you that. Fine print and details aside... that is a dangerous game to play when you are looking to beat the promises of an avowed progressive in a welfare-state society like ours.
Yes, reducing tax burdens increases tax revenue... this I know. So, reducing the tax burden of the top 45% of earners in this nation is a good thing, right? They are, after all, the nation's top EMPLOYERS, right? Not if you are going to correspondingly INCREASE the burden of the bottom 40%... who are the nation's largest group of CONSUMERS. In this case, at this time... the math doesn't work.
Why can't we simply take what has worked in the past and utilize it again? A reduced corporate tax rate, zero capital gains for ten years, a reduced income deduction table for the common 10-40 form, but an increased deduction form for itemized returns, and a lower (by, say... 7% to 9%?) general tax rate across the board. It worked in 1981, carried us through 1996... and it will work again NOW!
More money in the hands of consumers to free them from the needs and costs associated with bigger and bigger Government regulation and control. THAT was what brought us out of the Carter recession and ushered in the boom years of the 1990s. It is going to be tough going, no question... tough cuts will have to be made at a Federal level, but it is DOABLE, right now.
Why is this so hard?
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