08-09-2011, 05:14 PM
Ted King wrote:
[quote=Grace62]
Even the great acolytes of the flat tax: Steve Forbes, FreedomWorks, the Heritage Foundation, etc., include standard deductions, marital status, and deductions for children. The rate they use is 17%. Some also consider a minimum income amount below which you are not taxed at all, or taxed at a lower rate.
So even among its most ardent and true fans, the realities set in.
I think it's the "flat" part of the flat tax structures that people like Forbes are mostly interested in. The "less deduction" part they throw in with it (you could have flat rates even with all the deductions we have now) is just to get people to associate "flat tax" with "simplified tax structure". But since there is essentially no difference between the complexity of a progressively stepped tax structure and a flat tax structure if both allow and/or disallow the same deductions, the association between flat tax structure and simplification is just a ruse. Either that or they are being made so stupid by their ideology that they can't see that there isn't any connection between flat and simple tax structures that couldn't be essentially the same with a progressive stepped structure and simplification.
Well, looking directly at what FreedomWorks says on their site, it's simplification that they are after. "Flat tax" is part of that because it results in lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans, which is the foundational reason for FW's existence.