A flat tax has great appeal to the wealthy for obvious reasons, but those who propose it usually leave out mention of whether unearned income is to be included, or taxed at a different rate, as it is now !!! I can't take flat tax proposals seriously unless they also address the latter issue. It also has tremendous appeal to anyone with complex tax returns, i.e., many traders!, whether wealthy or not. Before I could support it, I would have to be convinced that a flat tax that brought unearned income under the same umbrella, I wouldn't consider it at all otherwise, wouldn't exacerbate the income distribution problem.
A federal consumption tax, on top of state and local taxes, would prevent an underground cash economy of a trillion dollars, or more!, escaping federal tax. Because I strongly favor leaving at least some capital with the lower middle class, I would want it to have a progressive structure. i.e., exempting certain items, or only taxing them above a cap.
The arguments against alternative ways of taxing will always include predictions that alternatives will be piled on top of the taxes we have now, and therefore alternatives are dangerous. This is another version of the kind of arguments that come from those who favor indiscriminately starving the federal government. Their reasoning runs along the lines of: 'so what if we kill the NIH, just so long as we eliminate the department of education it will be worth it'. I can't buy into this kind of thinking. It is of the same ilk that gave as an across the board sequester. That's a very bad way to run a government!
