Taxing the Mind

Count me among those who hadn't really thought about it, but Atrios (channeling Matt Yglesias) points out that proponents of the flat income tax often use the simplicity of the flat tax as a rational for scraping progressive tax rates. Sounds right, we have a complicated and progressive tax code. So, get rid of the tax brackets and taxes become simple, right? Not necessarily says Atrios:

The complicated part of doing your taxes has nothing to do with the tax rates.
There could be 5000 brackets and a formula which required advanced calculus to
compute and it wouldn't matter. The whole thing can always be mapped into a tax
table.

No, the complicated part is calculating your taxable income, says Matt:

This is complicated, primarily, because we tax different kinds of income
(dividends, interest, capital gains, wages, etc.) differently, and because the
rules for things like business expenses and so forth are complicated.

In other words, a flat tax is only flat after you go through the often laborious process of figuring out what is taxable.

I have always opposed a flat tax because it would eliminate progressivity, but I now see that its one supposed saving grace, its alleged simplicity, really doesn't address the simplicity issue at all. To really simplify, you could leave the progressive rates and get rid of deductions but that's never going to happen. Even if it was possible, I wouldn't call it a flat tax but a deduction-free tax.