This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Are You a Flat-Taxer? You Are Today! Happy Confiscatory Thieving Government Tax Day!

In honor of Tax Day [cue funereal music], I'm putting up this Washington Times editorial, Flat-out case, for your review. In it, Daniel Mitchell comments:

If anything is likely to boost support for the flat tax, it's the annual nightmare of tax season. Imagine junking all the paperwork the current system requires and replacing it with two simple postcard-sized forms that tax income only once and at one low rate. Imagine a simple and fair tax system that required all Americans to play by the same rules, regardless of how many lawyers and accountants they had on the payroll. And imagine politicians having no ability to put loopholes in the tax code in exchange for campaign cash.

Ooooh. Pretty. Me likes! Yay! Yay! Flat tax now!

I have to say, in the last couple of years, I have become flat-tax-friendly. I don't know if I've passed over into advocacy just yet, but I'm close. Flat tax policy has some incredibly good short-term benefits by those countries that've implemented it:

Other countries certainly seem to realize the importance of tax competition. Eight nations in Eastern Europe have adopted flat taxes, for instance, including a 13 percent flat tax in Russia. Two of the countries -- Romania and Georgia -- adopted the flat tax this January, and Poland just announced that it will be hopping on the flat-tax bandwagon. . . .

Other nations have cut tax rates deeply. Ireland does not have a flat tax, but it has slashed its corporate tax rate from 50 percent to 12.5 percent. Combined with other tax cuts, this helped turn the "Sick Man of Europe" into the "Celtic Tiger." Unemployment has dropped from 17 percent to 5 percent, and Ireland is now the second-richest nation in the European Union.

Tax competition has forced other European nations to cut their corporate tax rates. Indeed, there has been so much progress that every nation in Europe now has a lower corporate tax rate than the United States -- even socialist countries such as France and Sweden. . . .

Tax competition is causing a global shift toward better tax policy. Fifteen years ago, people would have called you crazy if you predicted the Soviet Union would disappear and that a bunch of communist countries would have a flat tax. Twenty years ago, people would have laughed if you said that Ireland would have a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate and be the fastest-growing economy in Europe.

Oh, if only I could keep more of the money that is mine! I'll make sure it gets to the poor in my community, thank you.