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THE MCCAIN TAX PLAN
May 15, 2008
Roni Deutch profiles John McCain's tax proposals. There are a lot of items that are sensible there, but there's also this:
The more revolutionary aspect of his plan is the offering of an optional flat tax system. This system would be held out as an alternative to the current progressive system and the myriad of credits, exemptions, deductions, carryover rules, and different tax rates for different forms of income. McCain’s plan would be to tax all taxpayers on all income sources at one single rate. The flat rate would be set at 19% for first two years, 17% thereafter.
Optional flat taxes are just weird. In real life everyone would compute their tax under the "regular" and optional systems and pay the lower amount. That way we could do taxes three ways:
1. The current regular tax;
2. The Alternative Minimum Tax, and
3. The optional flat tax.
Oh, joy.
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Comments
Joe, I think you have the wrong perspective...just keep telling yourself that as long as we have these knuckleheads in Congress, tax preparers have job security.
Posted by: Randy | May 15, 2008 8:35 AM