Replies to post #281308 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Dave Sissom]

The biggest champion of the flat tax is Steve Forbes. When he ran for the presidency, his flat tax plan exempted the first 20 or 25 thousand bucks. The VAT proponents exempt food and build in a rebate for poor people. There are immense savings to the country with a simplified tax code.

[ardent jd]

We could easily exclude the first $40k or so of income - Nobody making under $40k pays any taxes at all.

The beauty of a flat tax is that it dispels the myth that somebody else is paying for all this government, and thus makes it nearly impossible to raise taxes. It is estimated that government controls about 50% of GDP, including federal, state, local, things like social security, and mandated spending....and this is surely headed higher. If you think that this is too high for a free society, the only way to stop it is to limit and then lower taxes - because our comrades in Washington have made it clear that they will spend whatever they can collect in taxes, plus whatever else they can borrow. This is why proponents of bigger government are terrified of a flat tax, and focus so much energy on reducing the deficit (of course, by raising taxes) - they rightly see the deficit as the only real constraint on their efforts to spend even more.