Flat Wrong

One more time, the Republican presidential wannabe's are trotting out their long-time pet project, the flat tax. Like Libertarianism and other simplistic thought processes, a flat tax sounds fair and good, but in practice would be all fucked up.

Our American income tax system has forever been essentially "progressive", meaning that, as a rule, higher incomes have always paid higher tax rates, with lower incomes paying lower rates. A flat tax applies the same rate across the board to any income but, as it has been historically proposed, effectively gives tax rate cuts to higher incomes while raising the rate on the lowest incomes. This would be what's known as a "regressive" tax scheme (not unlike our Social Security set-up, if you think about it.)


The last guy to get a bit of traction from the flat tax idea was Steve Forbes, a failed Republican candidate from 16 years ago. The son of Malcolm Forbes and heir to a fortune, little Steven thought 17% flat sounded about right. The top rate at the time was 39.6%, so he was saving himself 22-23%. But many of our lowest income earners pay no income tax and Stevie's plan would have taken them from 0% to 17%. Forbes came nowhere near the GOP convention, let alone the White House.



Today, we have Herman Cain and his "9-9-9" -- a flat 9% each for personal, business, and sales tax rates. With a current top rate of 35%, Herman would give himself a 26 point rate cut, while taking the poor folks from 0% to 9%. And a 9% federal sales tax will really get the regular people buying some shit, won't it? At a flat 9% income tax rate, corporations get the same treatment -- big breaks for the big boys, and big increases for the little guys who've always paid next to nothing. Tough shit, sucka! As Cain recently put it, "If you don't have a job or you're not rich, blame yourself! It's your own damn fault!" Thanks, Hermie! Here's my German review of your plan: Nein! Nein! Nein!

Rick Perry immediately jumped on the flat-bed bandwagon, saying he too would trash the tax code and replace it with a flat tax of his own. He was light on specifics, or I've forgotten them already, but it doesn't really matter. Perry's an unelectable asshole. His big "jobs plan" of last week boiled down to "the oil, gas, and coal industries can do whatever they like, and the EPA can piss up a rope." You first, Rick.



Mitt "Glove" Romney has not yet endorsed the flat tax idea, and in fact opposed the Forbes idea of yore. But Mitt has a different "great" idea for economic growth: Deep cuts to the capital gains tax rate. Of course, a full three-quarters of American taxpayers have no capital gains exposure. So basically Mitt would like to benefit the already-wealthy while doing nothing for anyone else. Still trickling down? C'mon!

All this shit is modern classic conservative Republicanism -- reverse Robin Hood; give to the rich and take from the poor. That's the real agenda, and it always has been. And it's always been flat wrong.