I was going to give a regular guy's rebuttal to Michael Kinsley's piece in the L.A. Times yesterday ("Flat-tax and spend GOP", http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kinsley1dec01,0,1162496.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail). I was so confident that I could provide a quality response to his 'I-don't-know-how-he-won;-I-don't-know-anyone-who-voted-for-him' attitude and tone, but he got me in the end, (ahem) so to speak.
Maybe he was just exaggerating when he said he thinks "approximately zero" people would go for the simplicity of a flat tax or embedded (it's NOT a sales tax) FairTax if it meant losing deductions which would thereby increase their tax bills. To that, I was going to say he must have forgotten the approximately 6 billion hours Americans take each year to file their taxes. He must not fully understand the concept of opportunity cost. Some of those hours are hours that could be spent doing something else, whether something leisurely or productive. And what about all the money people already spend to have their taxes done for them? My guess is that those who have more and varied deductions might pay more and/or spend more time to do their taxes. That might make it a wash. To use Fred Thompson's plan on us as an example, we could choose to pay a flat 10% for this year. After accounting for personal exemptions ($39K for a family of 4, ~$49K when extrapolating that out to a family of 5, such as ours), our tax bill would roughly be what it would the same either way. Hmm, I'll go the simpler, flatter route. The only problem with Thompson's plan (and it's a small one, given that it is, after all, a step in the right direction) is that the rate would go up to 25% after income of $100K. As it stands right now, we straddle that line in that the missus works part time while our girls are pre-K. What will be the incentive for her to go back to work some more, not necessarily full-time if the little bit we go over $100K would compel us to pay another 15% in marginal taxes? We'd have more incentive for her to keep us just under that threshold to avoid it. Now THERE'S a system meant to foster productivity!
Then I wondered if the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation uses the same kinda static scoring of this tax cut that always, always overestimates the revenue shortfall from a tax cut (or, for that matter, underestimates the revenue increase from a tax hike). Why, oh why is it always assumed that the tax base will stay the exact same after alterations to the tax code? This is the folly that is the liberals' belief that wealth just occurs. It will always be there for more taxing. It never occurs to them...do they think it appeared just out of thin air?? Do they not think it has to be created it? Do they not think increased taxation is a disincentive to create more, or at least to change reporting structures so as to shelter more from taxation??
I was also going to no doubt perplex Mr. Kinsley again by raising my hand to say I'd accept lower Social Security payments (as long as I get back close to what I put in; please, just that) for a simpler tax code. I believe Thompson would also allow me to take back some of my contributions and invest them on my own, which I know could earn me a higher return.
He went on to say some other goofy stuff, like if person A's taxes go down, person B's taxes must necessarily go up, before stating the obvious: "The GOP bluff has been called. Republicans had six years in which they controlled the White House and (for most of that time) Congress. They could have cut any spending they wanted. They did the opposite. None of the realistic Republican presidential possibilities is discussing spending cuts except in the vaguest terms."
That makes it tough to be an enthusiastic GOP supporter.
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