Subject: Progressivity Comment: Every tax reform plan (like every tax cut) can be formulated and manipulated to shift the tax burden among income groups. Unfortunately, that's what the game is usually about with proposals for tax reform. We first need a discussion on progressivity. We need to know what are the CURRENT ACTUAL EFFECTIVE rates by income groups. Then we need a national debate on what is a fair progressivity. Once that's settled, designing a simple, cost-effective, transparent, pro-growth, hard-to-evade tax system to garner the necessary revenues according to the desired progressivity structure is relatively easy--there's many ways to do it. |