“If you have not done your taxes yet, do not count on getting help from the Internal Revenue Service in answering any last-minute questions that may arise. The IRS estimates that only half of the anxious and bewildered taxpayers who call the agency this year will get through to a “telephone assistor,” and those who do “could easily wait 30 minutes or more for limited service.”

Those numbers reflect a deeper problem that Ted Cruz tapped into on Monday, when he announced that he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Although the Texas senator’s dream of “abolishing the IRS” may be unrealistic, especially given the tax reform plan he favors, he is right to focus on the Internal Revenue Code’s excruciating complexity as a scandal crying out for reform.

“Instead of a tax code that crushes innovation [and] imposes burdens on families struggling to make ends meet,” Cruz said, “imagine a simple flat tax that lets every American file his or her taxes on a postcard.” Flat-tax proponents, including several Republican presidential candidates, have been asking us to imagine a postcard-sized tax return for more than three decades. If it still sounds far-fetched, that is only because we are sadly accustomed to jumping through hoops for the privilege of parting with our money.”

Source:Reason Magazine

Just once I would like to hear someone and its generally Republicans who support some type of flat tax, say, “I’m in favor of a middle class tax hike! Because middle class Americans are under taxed when it comes to the needs of the country and the Federal Government. And its time for middle class hard-working Americans who struggle to just pay their current taxes, to pay more in federal income taxes.” I don’t want to hear them say that because I believe middle class Americans are under taxed. Because the opposite is true, but for them to say that, because that is exactly what a flat tax is. At least as every plan that has been introduced inside or outside of Congress.

Why I say that? Because a flat tax depending on how you do it would be around 15-20% of people’s income. If you’re in the bottom tax rate right now, you’re paying ten-percent in federal income taxes. So now replace the current Progressive Income Tax with a regressive flat tax of anywhere between 15-20% and that would be anywhere between a 50-100% tax increase on someone making 40-50 thousand-dollars a year. Who are those people? Law enforcement, military personal, emergency management officers, teachers, truck drivers, construction workers, autoworkers and millions of other working-class Americans who struggle just to pay their current bills and that includes taxes. You really think they’re looking for a 50-100% tax increase right now to help them out?

I like the idea of tax reform and support it myself, including business tax reform. It is something that we must do as a country to get the type of economic growth that we need to not only get our economy back to pre-Great Recession levels, but to expand it further. But there are right ways to do things and there are wrong ways. I to personally would like to see us scrap the income tax and stop taxing production and creativity. And instead go with what Senator Ben Cardin, one of Senator Ted Cruz’s colleagues calls the Progressive Consumption Tax. A sales tax that would tax basic necessities of life at fairly low rates. But tax luxury items which would have to be defined at higher rates.

We could leave in the corporate tax, but have it much lower than thirty-five-percent, but make it progressive as well. Somewhere between 10-20 percent depending on the size of business and their profits. And scrap a lot of the, well garbage in the tax code. But individual and business to help pay for the lower tax rates. As well as to encourage more economic development in America both domestically and foreign. We could do all of these things without passing a single tax hike on middle class Americans. People that both Democrats and Republicans claim to support. But have different ways of showing it.