by Rick Wildman

Created on: June 05, 2009

Here's my proposal for a flat tax: 0%. Zero is a flat number.

Punishing people for making money is irrational. A sales tax is the only sensible way to go. It can't be avoided. There's no need to compute or track or file it. New versions of it don't need to be passed every year.

A 10% federal sales tax would cover all the core needs of the nation; border patrol, law enforcement, and military. As for all the entitlement/social services programs, people would have more of their own money to solve their own problems in the marketplace. There'd be no need for government-managed health care, or any of that other nonsense. The difference between the typical tax debt and the 10% sales tax would be an effective 20% raise for most Americans. They wouldn't need politicians to address their needs - they'd be better able to do so themselves.

Of course, going to a sales tax system would make a lot of people to find new lines of work. Good! People wasting their talents supporting the IRS could apply their smarts to developing products and services we could all benefit from.

Yes, this would be a radical change, but that's the only kind of change that matters. Tweaking an inherently flawed system is not an effective approach. Let's not forget that for the first half of American history, there was no income tax, and we prospered brilliantly.

The core thing to consider is this: Do you truly believe the government can do better things with your money than you can? If so, there's no reason for you to support change. If, however, you think you'd rather support your local hardware store than foreign policy on the other side of the planet, then a fixed sales tax is the way to go.

The true debate should not be who has the better plan: the Democrats or the Republicans. The debate should be centered on this question: "Do we need a tax plan that is so complex no single human being can comprehend it?" If someone says "Yes," ask him to explain why.

Nobody thinks about whether or not the system itself is a good thing. It's only about fixing it, tweaking it, redirecting it. I am here to say that taxing people for earning a living is the wrong way to go. Take a tax on what's sold. It's simple, and we already have 50 state systems in place.

Adding a federal system, while scrapping the entire income tax system, would be relatively easy to implement, and harder than the current system for the clever to circumnavigate.

There would be no need to question who had paid their fair part, and no need to freak out every April 15.

Remember: We did fine as a nation for 120+ years without an income tax. We can do fine without it, again.

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