Fuck Taxes, Flat or Progressive
...I had a thought: we could deal-once and for all-with the horrible complexities of the IRS tax system, expand the economy, generate even more revenues, if (you guessed it) we moved to a nice, simple, flat tax system-somewhere around 20 percent for the single tax rate. Blow out all the deductions, all the credits, and bid fond farewell to the labyrinth of complicated rules that no one (including the IRS) understands.Trust me, good things will happen.
I know, I know, there's nothing perfect in life. But a nice Steve Forbes/Art Laffer flat tax system would be pretty darn close. It would sure make a great benchmark to measure and grade all the assorted half-baked tax proposals coming out of Washington.
A flat tax - think of it.
Larry Kudlow on National Review
Due to those very tax code complexities, the taxes I "owed" this year were over and above what I had withheld from my primary paycheck. That the $760 came from my parents lessens not one bit the anger and irritation I hold against this system. The specific complexity? I decided to make more money and did so in a manner that the IRS treated differently from my normal salary. This was after I tried to take advantage of the little breaks littering the tax code: interest and tuition deductions and so forth.
The end result was a "debt" of around $3,100. In an anarchist society, would I have spent my money on free market alternatives to government-provided services? Certainly and without a doubt. It's not as if that cash would be sitting somewhere unused. I can think of three major purchases right now that I'd put that towards. Beyond consumer goods, if I decided my life and property were in danger beyond my ability to protect them, I might have hired a protection agency to keep an eye on my things. If I decided someone was harming me or my property through their actions, I might have hired a firm to file a lawsuit against them. If I decided I was unable to personally examine the safety of a product I wanted to buy, I might have hired a company to test it for me. I never asked for any of these services and explicitly want many of them to cease to exist entirely: the war on drugs, state control over broadcasting, foreign occupations, the (mis)management of our finances, etc. All of the useful and legitimate things the state wants to do can be done - and done better - when people are let alone to use their property and make of their own minds.
Now, I'm in the 15% tax bracket. Mr. Kudlow, in the final analysis, wants to increase my federal income tax burden. He's embracing the Sicilian Mafia's philosophy of Pagare Tutti, Pagare Meno. Everyone pays, everyone pays less. Except, of course, those of us at or under the 20% mark.
Taxation is theft, Larry. Try thinking about that before how easy it should be for us to bow down before the state's demands on our lives.
UPDATED 7/19/2007 2:18pm
Larry Kudlow, What Unbridled Free Market Capitalism?, and earlier, Larry Kudlow Misses the Forest for the Clinton