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Flat Tax Notations

"The public, it seems, is thoroughly fed up with a tax system that is not only of baroque complexity, but also downright arbitrary in impact. Replacing the system with a low-rate tax on income -- with few, if any, exclusions allowed -- is an idea that, by promising efficiency, equity, and simplicity, appeals to all parts of the political spectrum."

Washington Post Editorial

June 3, 1982

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"The ideal income tax would be a flat percentage of all income above an arbitrary threshold of, say, $10,000 a year. It would be simple, quick, and easy. As for fairness, it would be no less fair than the present tangle of exemptions, deductions, and credits that are currently producing not equity but a widespread public cynicism and hostility. The flat tax is the obvious remedy."

Washington Post Editorial

April 15, 1982

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"I believe what the country needs -- and what the American people want -- is a return to a fair and simple system of taxation. The legislation I am introducing today, the Income Tax Simplification Act of 1982, would eliminate virtually all deductions, credits, and exclusions. Instead of the current tax rate that ranges from 12 to 50 percent, it would establish a flat rate tax of 19 percent on gross income minus basic business expenses."

Then-Congressman Leon Panetta

Current Chief of Staff, Clinton White House

April 5,1982

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"Remarkably, there is a reform that achieves all these objectives [integration, simplification, help the poor]. Robert Aall and Alvin Rabushka, economists at the Hoover Institution, have proposed an integrated code that applies a single rate to both personal and comporate income. Their plan wipes away most deductions and exemptions, permitting a low tax rate of 19 percent...a superb idea..."

New York Times Editorial

March 27, 1992

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"The uniformity [flatness] of marginal tax rates...means that income can be taxed at its source; taxing income at its source will reduce compliance costs and increase compliance rates."

Joseph Stiglitz, Current Chairman

Council of Economic Advisors in Economics of the Public Sector, 1988

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"The reasons for wanting to raise the investment share of the GDP [gross domestic product] are straightforward: Workers are more productive when they are equipped with more and better capital, more productive workers earn higher real wages, and higher real wages are the mainspring of higher living standards. Few economic propositions are better supported than these -- or more important.

1994 Economic Report of the President Clinton White House

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"...A flat tax...would eliminate the parasitic class of tax-fixers who exempt the rich and the corporations from their fair share, and also eliminate the pulverizing bureaucracy which keeps people in permanent, servile confusion about whether or not they have complied with the law."

Christopher Hitchens

Nation Magazine

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"[The flat tax] offers something we on the left should always welcome: an opportunity to think about fundamental change. The plan has its flaws, some of them serious. But the intent -- to clean the Augean stables of the present tax code, with its labyrinth of exemptions, exclusions and credits, producing a revenue loss, at $393 billion, equal to the federal deficit -- is entirely laudible."

"Why the Left Should Support the Flat Tax"

Alexander Cockburn and Robert Pollin

Wall Street Journal, April 2, 1992