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| Yes | 60% | 153 votes | Total: 253 votes | |
| No | 40% | 100 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesA flat tax amendment makes sense on so many levels, from greater economic stability, healthier cash flow for government programs and services, and greater productivity and profitability for businesses and individuals, who would no longer have to expend time and emotional energy each year preparing taxes. But there are two areas where a flat tax serves the government and the American public on a fundamental level: the reduction of government operating expenses with respect to manpower and non sustainable resources.
Let's look at the first. Certainly, while the IRS would still be needed to manage the revenue generated by a flat tax and ensure its equitable distribution, there would be a significant reduction in personnel needed to process income tax paperwork. And, it's certainly feasible, with ever-advancing technology what it is, that even that little post card could be eliminated in favor of electronic submissions. Manpower costs are the chief expenditure of any venture, whether it be a business or a government entity. A reduction of government personnel and a redistribution of their valuable expertise into the private sector would increase the financial strength of the country. Businesses would have the opportunity to acquire such expertise to streamline their own companies, increase their own profitability, which would have the return effect of bolstering the economy.
Now, for the second point, savings that benefit taxpayers directly. The savings are not only monetary, but more importantly environmental. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 is a good example of our government using its power for the greater good. It has reduced expenses to a certain degree, but its implementation has been too slow for the country to feel the true benefit that it has the potential to birth. While millions of Americans have begun filing returns electronically for year, and while some W-2s are available in electronic form as well, there are still billions of printed pages each year, between tax forms, supplement forms, W-2s, 1099s, 1098s, etc that must be created, mailed, distributed, and eventually discarded into landfills. Then consider the supporting documentation that Americans must keep to prove their dedication, billions of slips of paper that would no longer be needed and which could be recycled into much more useful things, and eventually never created to begin with. Consider the footprint that billions upon billions of printed documents has upon the nation from a real estate perspective. Storage and the resources necessary to maintain documents and prevent deterioration are a real expense. Warehousing of documentation and the manpower needed to collect and catalog the records and to discard outdated materials could further be reduced and that space could be better utilized, perhaps even for more business start-ups.
The flat tax makes sense on so many levels. It has the potential to streamline our nation's government for greater productivity and to reduce the non sustainable resources and the environmental impacts of our current processes, in addition to the economic advantages to the poor and its ability to bolster the national economy. Americans should consider the Flat Tax Amendment the key to a door behind which lay personal and national profitability and greater economic stability.
Learn more about this author, Susan Cronk.
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No
The so-called "flat tax", whereby each earner would pay federal income tax on their earnings at the same rate as all other earners, would be an improvement, for taxpayers, over the current federal income tax system, on a scale that is hard to comprehend.
Doing away with all the credits, deductions, alternative calculations and thousands of different forms would so greatly and so positively impact the lives of all taxpayers, that we'd wonder why it took so long for our ostensibly caring government to make this simple change, and how we managed without it for so long.
That said, the "flat tax" is not the best alternative to our current federal income tax system for taxpayers.
Our current system is a relic, and it really isn't about raising revenue to support the essential operations of our federal government. It's about power and privilege, about who gets to make the rules, and who is forced to obey. It's about redistribution of wealth, forced charity, in a capitalist economic system in which redistribution isn't supposed to happen. It's about Congress buying the votes of voters who perceive themselves as "poor", "disadvantaged", or otherwise abused by "the system", and who, necessarily, have only Uncle Sam to rely on to "level the playing field".
It's about a government that provides plenty of lip service to individual liberty and freedom and holds up its Constitution as a beacon for other nations to follow, all the while ignoring that very same Constitution in the uneven, erratic, uncaring and sometimes devastating application of its Internal Revenue Code, knowing that most taxpayers are ignorant of the law, and, consequently, too scared of their big Uncle to force Congress to change the system.
No one can deny that sales taxes work. They work, in 45 of the 50 states, at the local, county and state levels to fund the essential operations of those governments. A national sales tax, commonly referred to as the "fair tax", is as much of an improvement over the "flat tax" as the "flat tax" is over our current federal income tax system. For taxpayers, that is, but not, apparently, for Uncle Sam.
The "fair tax" would mean the end of the Internal Revenue Service. It's pretty obvious to me that Uncle Sam feels that keeping the IRS is much more important than enacting a tax system which wouldn't require the IRS. It is taxpayers' fear of the IRS and Tax Court, where the accused is guilty until proved innocent, that is the true value of the IRS to Uncle Sam. Again, it's not about raising revenue. It's about politics, power, and controlling the behavior of taxpayers and voters.
Under the "fair tax", the only way to avoid paying tax would be to steal what you need, instead of buy it. Even thieves enjoy buying things. They may steal money, but to what end? To spend it, of course, and in the course of spending, under the "fair tax", they could not avoid becoming taxpayers.
Under the "fair tax", individual financial information would be kept from the government. Uncle Sam hates the thought of true individual privacy. Although he went to some trouble to enact federal law (Title 12, United States Code) which, ostensibly, protects our personal financial information, that law contains all the loopholes he needs to monitor your financial dealings and acquire your personal information if he wants it.
The "fair tax" would give taxpayers, not Uncle Sam, the power to control how much they pay in taxes, by controlling how much they spend. Trust me on this: The thought of allowing taxpayers to be in control is not something that sits well with our spendthrift Uncle.
Although former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said, several times, that he was in favor of the "fair tax", it's doubtful that he would have been able to get it passed through Congress, had he been elected. Congress doesn't want to stop its wasteful spending or cut back on increasing its control over our lives.
Our Congress knows its constituents' attention spans are short. Congress understands that most taxpayers are either unable or unwilling to grasp the concept of a life in America whereby paychecks don't have "Federal Income Tax Withholding" (FITW) skimmed off the top. By a few members of Congress simply raising objections to changing the current system, and scaring taxpayers with the potential specter of a national sales tax greater than 20 percent on nearly everything we would buy, the wind quickly goes out of the sails of the Fair Tax movement. Another crisis averted! Whew!
No, the "flat tax" is not the best alternative to our current federal income tax system; the "fair tax" is. But, given a choice between our current system and the "flat tax", I'd choose the "flat tax" in a New York minute. I know, however, that the "flat tax" has just as much of a chance of being enacted as the "fair tax", which is to say, no chance at all. So I ain't holding my breath...
Learn more about this author, Chris Messner.
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