Flat-tax primer

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FLAT TAX REVOLUTION: USING A POSTCARD TO ABOLISH THE IRS

By Steve Forbes

Regnery Publishing,

$24.95, 218 pages

If you read only one book between now and the end of the year, read this one. It will change the way you think about taxation. Common sense, clearly stated, jumps off nearly every one of its 158 pages of text (not counting several useful appendixes).

Publisher Steve Forbes is no newcomer to the idea of a flat tax that would do away with the 9-million-word federal tax code, filled as it is with deductions, credits, exemptions, brackets and confusion. The flat tax is simplicity itself. It would, he writes, "eliminate the possibility of setting up complicated tax avoidance schemes." He quotes former House Majority Leader Dick Armey as saying, "The flat tax would have a chilling effect on the lobbying industry and would transform the political culture in Washington."

Twice in losing campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination he plugged the flat tax, although his losses had almost nothing to do with that proposal. It is an axiom in politics that one should not make a major new idea the centerpiece of one's campaign, for the vagaries of politics make it impossible for the idea to be properly absorbed and debated.

Mr. Forbes is much better able to campaign for the flat tax today, away from partisan politics. Recently in Australia for a conference, he lobbied Prime Minister John Howard to adopt the concept.

In 1962, economists Milton and Rose Friedman first proposed a flat-rate income tax. In the 1980s, economists Alvin Rabushka and Robert Hall devoted a book to it. Now comes Mr. Forbes with an updated, comprehensive and convincing argument for it.