US Flat Tax Proposed

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

31 March 2010

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) has proposed that the increasingly complex US Internal Revenue Code be replaced by a flat tax that would dramatically simplify the US tax system.

In a video documentary released on March 29, the CF&P suggests that a flat tax would enable taxpayers to complete their annual tax return on simple postcard-sized forms, replacing the hundreds of forms needed to administer the current tax system.

"The current income tax system is burdensome, rigged to help the politically well connected, and it makes America less competitive" said CF&P Foundation President Andrew Quinlan. "A flat tax would help the economy and treat all Americans equally."

"America's top fiscal policy goal should be smaller government," added Dan Mitchell, narrator of the video and Cato Institute Senior Fellow. "But fixing the tax code should be second on the list since the current system needlessly reduces prosperity."

According to the National Taxpayer Advocate's 2009 annual report to Congress, there had been more than 3,250 changes to the tax code since 2001 - an average of more than one a day. In 2008, there were more than 500 changes alone. What’s more, nobody is quite sure quite how long the tax code is any more. Olson’s office turned up 3.7 million words during the course of preparing her 2008 report to Congress. The Tax Foundation, the non-partisan tax policy think tank, has calculated that the tax code has tripled in length since 1975.

In 2006, individuals and businesses spent a combined USD193bn – equal to 14% of total US tax receipts – complying with the tax code; and 82% of individual tax filers have to pay for help to complete their tax returns, so complex and daunting do they find the task.

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