Bartlett on tax reform

Bruce Bartlett’s suggestion in Economix (h/t @afrakt) would be a big change, namely get rid of the income tax for most persons (those under $100,000 income) and replace it with a 12.5% VAT. His motivation for ending the income tax code for most is doing away with tax expenditures without having to take them on one by one. I have a post later today that has a similar logic of getting rid of the corporate income tax because it is exceedingly hard to levy such a tax.

Bruce notes (and many others have) that the Bowles-Simpson plan was rejected with only 38 votes a few weeks back. However, it wasn’t really the same set of policies contained in the report. The bipartisan group decided they were going to call it that I guess, but it is not so clear why. Just call it a bipartisan budget that was the best we could do (and which obviously didn’t have much support). The Bipartisan Policy Center seems to be the only place pushing back against this meme.

Maybe it is not that important, I just don’t get why people cannot be more precise.