Released: April 11, 2007

Simple ‘flat tax’ faces skepticism

Source: David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle

The U.S. tax code runs more than 60,000 pages - a sprawling tangle of loopholes and exemptions that’s all but incomprehensible to ordinary taxpayers. Imagine if “War and Peace” ran to 45 volumes. That’s the scope of our tax law.

As millions of Americans race to get their returns filed by next week’s deadline, and as Democrats try yet again to wipe out the alternative minimum tax, is it finally time we introduced some order and simplicity to the system?

More to the point: Is it time for a closer look at the flat tax?

Alvin Rabushka, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, says yes. Then again, as co-author with Robert Hall of the groundbreaking 1985 book “The Flat Tax,” Rabushka isn’t exactly unbiased on the subject.

“Our existing system increases economic costs for the government and taxpayers,” he told me. “It’s a very costly burden.”

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