Is yesterday's Washington Post, Michael Kinsley does a fantastic job explaining Governor Huckabee and Senator Fred Thompson's tax simplification proposals, including their distributional impact and embedded deception.
Partially in the name of simplicity, Huckabee endorses the Fair Tax which inherently distributes tax burdens away from the wealthy to everyone else (despite marginal provisions to counteract this inevitability).
Also advocating simplicity, Thompson proposes a Flat Tax option to taxpayers that follows a familiar tax-cutting strategy that Kinsley exposes for what it is:
"The real strategy of Thompson's plan is a familiar one from past Republican tax plans: give large breaks to business and the wealthy (such as abolishing the estate tax), bribe the middle class to go along by offering smaller breaks to them, and don't worry about paying for it all."The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has a helpful matrix of the presidential candidates' tax proposals.
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