Mitt Romney is the latest Republican rushing to adopt an ultra-regressive Flat Tax, in an effort to appeal to the radicals who decide the Republican Primaries.
Romney joining his GOP rivals in flat-tax fever
By Steven Thomma
McClatchy Newspapers
A day earlier, rival Rick Perry proposed an optional flat 20 percent tax on income. Both followed Herman Cain's pitch for a flat 9 percent income tax as part of his 9-9-9 plan, which helped him jump to the top tier of candidates for their party's 2012 nomination. Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann also support a flat tax.
A flat tax - so called because it would set one tax rate for all income groups while taking away many or all deductions - would simplify taxes. It also would almost certainly give big tax cuts to wealthy Americans. Republicans say cutting taxes, especially on the wealthy, helps spur investment, economic growth, and hiring.
At the same time, most of the Republican candidates propose other changes that also would mean big tax cuts for high-income Americans, such as eliminating taxes on dividend income or capital gains, and eliminating the estate tax, which Republicans call the "death tax."
In 1996, Romney criticized a flat-tax proposal as a boon to the rich. When he announced his economic agenda this year, he said he would pursue a "long-term goal" of a "flatter, fairer, simpler structure." But he also said he wouldn't change any personal income tax rates.
On Wednesday, he said, "I'll lay out some additional ways to make the tax code more flat."
All the proposed Flat Tax schemes would completely eliminate progressivity from The U.S. tax system for the first time since the first Federal Income Tax was instituted in 1913. These Reactionaries want to put the Federal Government time machine and send it back a century, giving it the revenue similar to what we had 100 years ago, forcing the elimination of many modern government's functions that promote the public good of the vast majority of its citizens, and re-create the rudimentary way the Federal Government was configured back in 1912.
Maybe Mitt should start showing up at his campaign events in a 1912 Hupmobile to appeal to Republican reactionaries even more.
Americans shouldn't have to re-learn our lesson from the mistake of relying on a untra-regressive tax system, any more than we should restrict ourselves to the technologies that were in use in 1912.