You Can’t — and Shouldn’t — Abolish the IRS [A critique of Ted Cruz's proposal]

National Review ^ | 04/23/2015 | by PATRICK BRENNAN

[Taxman]

Your self-serving tax preparer needs to imagine how much fun it would be, and how lucrative it would be, to give accounting and financial advice to individuals and companies based on ROI absent the infernal tax code!

CPAs and the like will be richer, have better health and a better sex life after the FairTax becomes law of the land!

[liberalh8ter]

I suggested that to him and he admitted he did have the licensing but “didn't want to sell financial products”.

[semimojo]

You are correct!

The so-called “Flat Tax” is still an income tax, and I can make the case that a flat income tax will cause the IRS to become even more intrusive and antagonistic towards the citizenry (that would be US!).

The problem is that everyone wants a simple solution. Politicians have had bumper sticker solutions (Abolish the IRS!) for decades, but they usually ignore the realities of everyday life. Even Ted's flat tax proposal retains the mortgage interest and charitable deductions.

If starting from scratch I would advocate a consumption tax but I don't see a path to get there from where we are now.

The reality is we need to deal with what we have in front of us and that is an income tax with a horribly bastardized (by congress) incentive system.

As satisfying as it feels we can't just trash the existing system but have to discuss realistic alternatives.

[sitetest]

This attacks the wrong end of the beast.

We have a complex tax code because we collect a lot of taxes.

We collect a lot of money in taxes because we spend it on a too-large government.

Cut the size of government (a lot), and some of this problem will fix itself.

[Taxman]

The ONLY realistic alternative is the FairTax!

Above all else, we must insist that there BE NO hybrid system! We MUST abolish the income tax completely, and do an orderly wind down of the IRS. Transition issues can be worked out.

If we are smart enough to go to the moon, and build a space station, we are smart enough to replace the income tax with the FairTax and abolish the IRS without causing the country to collapse!

[Svartalfiar]

Most of the complexity in the system is in determining what is income, not in figuring out what rate to pay on that income.

True, but both flat and progressive tax systems will have that same problem. There is nothing in that that makes one more complicated or less so than the other.

There is withholding on all employees both full and part-time. Then there are all the rules on who is an official “employee”. Add to this, determining just exactly what is “income” and there will be thousands of pages of rules on that.

Then add to this the mischief that politicians can do to all those regulations.

Withholding should be entirely optional. Also, that has no effect on income or tax rate, it's just a pay-as-you-earn taxing system. And there shouldn't be nearly as many regulations as there are now. Any kind of subsidy, deduction, credit, etc. is all ridiculous and has no place in our system.

Besides, once you actually manage to go to a state-level tax system, you won't have nearly as many issues with the FedGov trying to do any of that. Some states may have that issue, but many won't.