A Consumed Income World- The Low Income and Prospects for Simplification- Replies to Professors Fleming and Yin

Abstract

As chair of the Committee on Tax Structure and Simplification of the Section of Taxation of the American Bar Association, I invited Professors Fleming and Yin to lead a discussion with members of the Committee on the effects of various proposed consumed income tax models. Splendid scholars as they are, each converted his informal remarks into a published article.
Meanwhile, the airwaves have been surfeited with talk shows, interviews, and panel discussions dealing ad nauseam with flat, and flatter, taxes, a consumed income tax, a national sales tax, and various proposals for taxation of business income. The general obfuscation of important and critical issues often seems intentionally deliberate, and in any case, however presented, does little to inform the public. Of all the issues we have on our national platter-abortion, gun control, educational policy, crime in the streets-taxation is the most emotionally supercharged because it affects us all. We all pay taxes, direct and indirect; taxes pervade and permeate our lives. Why can we not have clear and direct demonstrations of what various proposals would accomplish? Some years ago, Louis Eisenstein wrote that the problem is not that the American people do not understand the tax system; rather, the problem is that they may come to understand it too well.