I Don't See How A Flat Tax Solves Anything

I fully admit, I don't understand the arcane art and science that is taxes and their applicable laws. But there's been something that has sort of been on my mind since around October or so.

Back when the Tea Party movement was in full force (not that it isn't now), there was clamoring for an overhaul of our tax system. I think anyone can agree our tax system is far from perfect, and needlessly convoluted. But their solution, I feel, far oversimplified things. I don't think you can take the most complicated of things, and reduce it to the simplest without losing something.

To boil humans, an extremely complicated species, for sure, into an amoeba, for example. So much would be lost in the process. Intelligent thought, for example. And no, I will not use this as an opportunity to insult tea partiers or republicans. =)

So you have our insanely complicated tax system, thousands of pages of tax codes, and thousands of people to help people understand all this. Big companies hire tax lawyers and accounting firms to pay as little as possible, so on and so forth. Poor people pay no tax, because, well, they're poor. Average people pay average tax, and the rich overwhelmingly pay most of the taxes.

Some people want to change this to a flat tax, and I understand the sentiment. Taxes are complicated, and who wants to pay someone to do their taxes. Who wants to employ an entire government agency to collect them, et cetera. Well, I do, for one.

Imagine that there was a flat tax. First of all, it doesn't work, a flat tax is regressive. Flat tax boils down to a very simple set of ideas:

First, the poor end up paying more taxes. The people who can afford it least actually have to pay more and, in effect become poorer.

Second, the rich pay less in tax. The people who need the money least end up with even more money.

The gross side effect of this nonsense is that the middle class basically disappears. The income inequality is already bad enough, with CEOs making hundreds of times what their workers earn, and that is largely due to the fact that our tax system has been slowly regressing more towards a flat tax (in theory).

But, taxes really aren't that complicated. Most people can file a 1040 or 1040EZ which takes only an hour or so of your time, even if you don't know what you're doing. For self-employed people, taxes can in fact be more complicated, but this is largely do to having to do your own bookkeeping, not an overly complex system of tax codes. How much did you spend on gas and electricity? There's a line for that on the form. How much in entertainment and food? Take half of that and slap it on the form. It's basically a boring adult version of color-by-numbers.

As for the people that taxes are really complicated for? The obscenely rich who have investments and the like who pay lobbyists to insert loopholes that they then hire tax lawyers and accounting firms to exploit to the max. Maybe this is a little biased, but when is the last time you took advantage of a tax loophole? I'll bet Exxon-Mobile does it on a daily basis, like monkeys on the discovery channel. Does it make sense that the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment gets paid $800,000 in wages (taxed at 35%) and $20 million in dividends (taxed at 15%). This is why the tax codes are needlessly complicated, because rich people intended it to be so.

Note: I'm being chastised because the other half would like to work out, so I will bring this post to a close. I actually only intended it to be a short little snippet of a post anyway.

Casting aside the irreparable harm that a flat tax would cause to this country's economy and to it's people, I have another extremely large concern. This is my main concern, really, and why I started this post originally.

If we went to a flat tax for everything, and got rid of the IRS, then what? What about those people? They are now not only out of a job but out of a career. They will have been trained for an industry that no longer exists. The IRS workers would all be out of jobs and basically screwed. Would tea partiers be willing to have the government pay to reeducate these people for new careers? Or are they strictly on their own? Would my dad be able to retire? I don't think he can go back to school for a new career at his age. What about my brother and his family? Would they be out of luck too? Would they add to unemployment and homeless statistics? What about Kaulean who does something related to taxes and auditing for the government?

Also, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, and the like. Although I don't like them as businesses, certainly they employ at least some decent people who'd be out of work. As would every other CPA or accountant.

So tell me again, how is a flat tax good, and what problems does it solve? Because frankly, my dear, I just don't see it.