In the famous “Bridge of Death” scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, some of the knights are asked to name their favorite color. One of them mistakenly says blue instead of yellow and is hurled into the Gorge of Eternal Peril.
I can sympathize with the unfortunate chap. If asked my least favorite part of the tax code, I sometimes get confused because there are so many possible answers.
Do I most despise the high tax rates that undermine economic growth?
Am I more upset about the pervasive double taxation of income that is saved and invested?
Or do I get most agitated by a corrupt and punitive IRS?
How about the distorting loopholes for politically connected interest groups?
And the anxiety of taxpayers who can’t figure out how to comply with an ever-changing tax code?
Depending on my mood and time of day, any of these options might be at the top of my list.
But I also might say that I’m most upset about the way that the tax code facilitates a perverse form of legalized corruption in Washington. In this FBN interview, I explain how even small tax bills often are vehicles for lining the pockets of lobbyists and politicians.
To elaborate, some taxpayers may pay more when there’s new tax legislation and some may pay less. But this “winners” and “losers” game only applies outside the beltway.
The inside-the-beltway crowd always wins. Whether they’re lobbying for or against a provision, they get very big checks. Whether they’re voting yes or no on legislation, they’re getting showered with campaign contributions.
This chart, showing the growing number of pages in the tax code (by the way, we’re now up to 76,000 pages of tax law), also could be seen as a proxy for how the Washington establishment has gamed the system so that they always profit.
Or, to be more specific, it’s an example of how government has become a racket for the benefit of insiders. All of us pay more and endure less growth, but Washington’s gilded class lives fat and happy because there is always lots of money changing hands.
So how do we solve this problem?
The answer, at least for a period of time, in the flat tax. This video explains how this simple and fair system would operate.
But even though I’m a big advocate of tax reform, the flat tax is only a partial solution.
Simply stated, there’s no way to reduce Washington corruption until and unless you shrink the size and scope of the federal government.
That means somehow figuring out how to restore the Constitution’s limits on Washington. For much of our nation’s history, federal spending consumed only about 3 percent of our economic output.
And when the public sector was small and government generally focused only on core competencies, there wasn’t nearly as much opportunity for the graft and sleaze that characterize modern Washington.
P.S. The bad news is that all the projections show that the federal government will get far bigger in the future. So before we shrink the burden of government, we first need to come up with ways to keep it from growing.
P.P.S. The national sales tax is another intermediate option for reducing DC corruption, though that option requires repeal of the 16th Amendment so politicians don’t pull a bait-and-switch game and stick up with both an income tax and consumption tax.
