In a February 20, 2009 commentary at thenorthwestern.com, Ron Griffin (no relation to the Washburn Law professor) encourages President Obama to adopt real reform in the way the nation collects the revenues needed to run the government by reforming of the income tax system.  Suggested reform measures include:

• a flat tax rate (everyone pays the same tax rate but almost everyone pays something);
• a cap on the maximum rate (increased only by a two-thirds majority vote by Congress);
• a variable tax rate linked to the federal budget (set each year by Congress during the budget approval process);
• only one “deduction,” and that is the establishment of a base nontaxable rate of pay (this standard deduction, could, for example, be $10,000 per wage earner and $5,000 per dependent);
• a higher tax rate and cap for income from short-term stock speculation.

Advantages of implementing these measures include: no deductions means no annual filing of forms, minimizing withholding from our income, lower cost of collecting taxes, lower fraud and less potential abuse by the IRS in collection of overdue taxes.

Tags: Taxes

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Economy, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.