Should we consider a flat tax again?

Income tax time has come and gone again with few expressions being uttered publicly about the unpopularity of the way we collect taxes. Maybe folks have given up on finding a better way to do it.

Income taxes are despised by most people because of the time and effort that go into determining how much tax one owes, how many charitable contributions and deductions can reduce the bill and the amount of time and effort to file it. Plus, there is no simplified solution to finding out how much tax is owed by individual persons.

Many people who earned a lot could owe a small amount of cash legally because they took advantage of charitable contributions which gain discounts on the amount of tax they owe. Also it’s not hard to find deductions in one’s income that apply to certain persons.

In recent years, a flat tax has been proposed based on income only which would charge everyone more or less at the same rate which would be at a higher or lower percentage of income depending upon the total income of the person.

This could turn out to be about the fairest and easiest way to assess income taxes because each wage earner would pay more in line with what he could afford.

It could be gaged on how much total income the person received without regard to how they spent their money. In other words, the rich would pay more but overall the rates would be fairer.

Computing income taxes under today’s method is very complicated which allows many people to evade the high taxes others may owe. It is exhausting for one to prepare his own return and just not worth the turmoil it produces to some in trying to follow the rules that now exist in its preparation.

But it appears that, unless the flat tax can be put into a mode that offers few complications and presents just a straight-forward way of paying one’s taxes according to what he can afford, it may never be revived. But hopefully, it will some day find its way into our tax-paying world and make our task of  paying our part into our government’s operation a lot simpler and less exasperating.Maybe our next Congress will look into that.