Americans are more likely to pay up when they perceive the system is simple, fair and uniformly applied. This approach would not just increase the efficiency of the tax code but could increase tax collections and reduce the tax gap.Īlmost every IRS commissioner for the last 50 years has confirmed that our income tax system can only function with broad voluntary compliance - unless Biden wants to put an IRS agent in every boardroom and home office in America. The two of us have long endorsed a flat tax of around 17 percent with minimal special-interest deductions - and, of course, one of us famously ran for president of the United States on that platform. Second, broaden the tax base by eliminating the hundreds of special-interest loopholes to make the tax system fairer. First, keep tax rates as low as possible to reduce the economic distortions and disincentives of the tax code. True tax reform should be based on two principles that not long ago were universally accepted by Democrats and Republicans. The Biden team keeps referring to this as “tax reform,” but it is the opposite of that. What makes the IRS expansion doubly foolish is that the $2.3 trillion Biden tax plan would not just raise personal income, corporate, estate tax and payroll tax rates, but it would add more loopholes and tax shelters to the 30,000-page tax code. And that comes in the shadows of the Lois Lerner affair d uring the Obama years, when the agency targeted the tax returns of conservative organizations and donors who happened to oppose Obama’s policies. Ironically, this proposal comes smack in the middle of the latest scandal at the IRS, with agents illegally turning over private tax return data of millionaires and billionaires to the media.

It’s the kind of proposal only tax accountants, tax lawyers and D.C. This sounds like as much fun as a proctology exam. The White House predicts this will collect hundreds of billions of dollars in alleged unpaid taxes. One of President Biden’s worst - and most unpopular - ideas is to double the size of the Internal Revenue Service by adding $80 billion to its budget and hiring as many as 85,000 more auditors and agents.

Would a flat tax work