[Aristotelian]

I'm not so sure I buy the premise of an economic slowdown bordering on recession, but I am glad to see tax policy moving front and center in the election. This should help the GOP, whoever the nominee is.

[Man50D]

But the new wrinkle Mr. Thompson has just added is a proposal for a voluntary flat tax. Taxpayers would have the option of paying a flat income tax, with two rates. For joint filers, that would be 10% for incomes up to $100,000 and 25% above that.

This is not a new wrinkle. Mr. Seib needs a history lesson. When the 16th Amendment was enacted in 1913 it began, like Thompson's proposal, as a two tiered flat tax system. It ranged from merely 1% on the first $20,000 of taxable income and was only 7% on incomes above $500,000. In 1939, 26 years after the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, only 5% of the population, counting both taxpayers and their dependents, was required to file returns. Today, more than 80% of the population is under the income tax.

Fred Thompson's proposal is simply more tinkering with an oppressive overly burdensome and complex 67,000+ page tax code system. It will revert us back 94 years but eventually will become once again the monstrosity it is today. If Fred Thompson were truly serious about reducing the tax burden he would call for a fundamental change by replacing federal income taxes with a national sales tax as outlined in the Fair Tax Act(HR25/S.1025) currently before Congress. Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.

[etlib]

For Republicans, the bad news is that they inevitably would shoulder much of the blame because they control the White House.

But, of course, the problem is that the Dems control congress where the tax policy must originate. And, any on-coming recession is likely due to economic pull-back due to the almost certain knowledge that the Dems will allow the "Bush tax cuts" to expire resulting in a huge, sudden tax increase.

Sad that the public and even the WSJ don't even realize this.