Flat tax won't die

I hate to sound like a broken record (how much longer before the roots of that expression are unknown to those who use it?) but I'm merely responding to flat-tax supporters' own repetitive mantras. Today, Ed Fuelner at the Heritage Foundation once again trumpets the ease and simplicity of the flat tax. We're told once again that with a flat tax, "We could file our returns on the back of a postcard." We're told once again that with a flat tax, we "could collect all the revenue the government needs and save Americans time and worry." But as I've said here and here and here, the problem with our tax code is not calculating the amount of tax owed, which is all that a flat tax reforms. Currently, once one determines one's taxable income, one consults a chart to find one's tax burden. Under a flat tax, once one determines one's taxable income, one multiplies it by the flat tax rate to find the tax burden. Not much of reform, is it? No, because the real problem with our tax code is the first step, the determination of taxable income. Real tax reform can only come when we simplify this step, which, strictly speaking, a flat tax won't do. Therefore, when people speak of the flat tax as tax reform, they are implicitly including a host of other things that have nothing to do with the actual tax rate's flatness. These other things are probably needed. So what's the big deal? Well, think about it. Under our current tax system, called a progressive system, the rich pay a higher percentage of tax than the poor do. So if we introduce a flat tax, that means that rich people will end up paying less tax and poor people will end up paying more tax. And if we make the flat tax revenue-neutral, which is to say that it will raise the same amount of revenue as the current system, the poor will have to pay much, much more to make up for the taxes that the rich are no longer paying. So, my point, again, is that the flat tax is a double-whammy. It doesn't actually reform anything, but it will harm low-income people and probably result in less government revenue to boot.