Charlie Self said:

All these flat tax and simple tax ideas work nicely on paper. I'm not
at all sure they will work any better in practice than the horrendous
and untrackable mishmash we already have. Then again, if a few simple
objections, as above, can be answered, they sure as hell cannot be
worse.

They work on paper because the voodoo priests... er... "economists"
who devise such schemes are beholden to the ones who pay for said
research. They game the system now, and you can bet they will game the
system should it be altered. But you're right, Charlie; almost any
truly equitable scheme would be a vast improvement over the current
system of loopholes and imbalances.

The thing that bothers me most about the "Fair Tax" proposals are the
people who devised it (a herd of Texas millionaires), and the
proclivity of the well heeled to bypass said taxes - bartering would
become the new untaxed currency amongst the well connected.
(Like there's not enough good ol' boy "favor" swapping ongoing at
present - particularly in political circles. They'll simply groom it
to new depths of impropriety.)

FWIW,

Greg G.