Flat tax-statements-Bowyer

==Background==
* The Flat tax was the topic of Jerry Bowyer who appeared on Fox News Channel's show, Cashin' In with fellow guest Wayne Rogers, Wayne Rogers & Company; Jonathan Hoenig, Capitalistpig Asset Management; Jonas Max Ferris, MAXfunds.com; and Dagen McDowell, FOX Business News.
==Insights==
* I the US had a flat tax, it would rule the world for the next 500 years. I mean, flat taxes are practical and they are also moral... A flat fax would be a major benefit for this country.
* The U.S. tax code encourages cheating, waste, complexity and paper shoveling, not actual productivity.
* The congress is idiotic when it comes to taxes.
** Politicians need something to do. They need to justify their paychecks. They just buck up the tax system. They add exemptions. Add breaks to appease their constituents. We had a simplification 20 years ago and we just threw it away.
==Details==
===Transcripts of TV Interview in December 2006 ===
Want to fix the tax mess here in America? President Bush says look at the little country of Estonia. That country is thriving after Communist rule and many say its flat tax system is a big reason why. Could the president even sell that here right now?
Jonathan Hoenig, Capitalistpig Asset Management: Well, I don't think he could sell it but if he could, Terry, this country would rule the world for the next 500 years. I mean, flat taxes are practical and they are also moral. The tax code used to be two pages long, it's now 17,000 pages long. It's seven times the size of the Bible. We waste $80 billion a year just figuring out how to comply. A flat fax would be a major benefit for this country.
Terry Keenan: Jerry, does the president have the political capital at all to push anything like this through?
Jerry Bowyer, National Review Online: No. I don't think he has the political capital to push a flat tax through. He spent that political capital on the idea of Social Security private accounts, which may have turned out to be a bit of an overreach. But that doesn't mean he couldn't accomplish something. Things would be better for him if he had a Republican Congress and he could set the initiative. He can't do that. But you don't need to go so far as completely redesigning the tax code to simple it. Jonathan's right. I used to be a tax accountant; the code is really thick.
Jonathan Hoenig: It encourages paper shoveling, not actual productivity.
Terry Keenan: It also encourages cheating in some ways.
Jerry Bowyer: It does. And it encourages a lot of waste. A lot of that code and a lot of those regulations are about technical enforcement matters that are about the timing. They're not about who pays taxes or how much they pay. They are about when you pay them. You could get rid of a lot of that complexity without really creating winners and losers.
Terry Keenan: But Wayne, the tax system has gotten more progressive under this president in the sense of lower rates for the low-income earners.
Wayne Rogers, Wayne Rogers & Company: Yeah, and Jonathan is right. I don't know much about taxes except that I don't like them and I assume nobody really does like them. Congress is also to blame here. The congress is idiotic when it comes to taxes. We've got somebody else who is going to be the head of one of those committees who is not the brightest light in the chapel.
Jonathan Hoenig: Do you support the progressive tax system? The whole idea that it shouldn't be flat, that the rich should pay more as a percentage of their income than the not-so-rich. Do you support that?
Wayne Rogers: Jonathan, I'm not into the theory here. You've got to support the military, you have to support the court system, and you have to support certain activities in the government. Now, you might go to a flat tax of some kind. It could be a value-added tax. That might be a way. Europe has value-added tax. That is a flat tax.
Terry Keenan: But is this all "pie-in-the-sky" Jonas?
Jonas Max Ferris, MAXfunds.com: It is "pie-in-the-sky" for Bush. I mean no government is going to get rid of the prospecting tax in the America. The public likes it, you're taxing the rich more, it's part of making the minimum wage stay the stay the same. As far as why these countries do it; they have trouble collecting taxes in Russia and those countries, so they have to have a very simple code or everybody cheats. It would probably benefit us, especially from the simplicity point of view.
Dagen McDowell, FOX Business News: I get giddy just thinking about the possibility of having a flat tax because it would just make doing your taxes so easy. But I can't imagine that the government would ever push one through because politicians need something to do, they need to justify their paychecks. And what do they do? They just buck up the tax system. They add exemptions; add breaks to appease their constituents. We had a simplification 20 years ago and we just threw it away.
Terry Keenan: Jerry, you advised Estonia in putting in its flat tax system. Any lessons you can take from there that could actually be applicable here?
Jerry Bowyer: They contacted me about privatization. I was a privatization czar for a big city here in the U.S. and they weren't sure they wanted the private market, but I was contacted by Estonia and it was amazing. This formerly communist country liked private markets. Here is what I think. Clearly it is working for Estonia. That little country is the little country that could. They are growing gangbusters. So is Latvia. These Baltic states are really doing well. They are attracting capital.
Terry Keenan: Does it cut back on the tax fraud that we see rampant in Russia?
Jerry Bowyer: It cuts back on tax fraud and encourages growth. Wayne is right; this is kind of a theoretical discussion.
Jonathan Hoenig: But it's also moral. It doesn't just work in practice; it works this theory, too. Democrats want a progressive tax like Karl Marx did.
Jerry Bowyer: We're not going to get it, so�
Dagen McDowell: Another thing. It would mean getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction. You can only imagine in the short-term how that would hurt the housing market.
Wayne Rogers: Everybody has said how complicated the tax system is. Congress can't do something that takes one sheet of paper, how are they possibly going to attack something that is this complicated. They can't do. You would have to start over from scratch and it's not going to happen.
Terry Keenan: Jonas, do you think that the president could at least float this idea as a counter to the democratic congress trying to raise taxes going forward?
Jonas Max Ferris: No, this is harder to flow than the Social Security reform and that was with Republicans on his side. It's not going happen. But the complexity here is the deduction side of the equation. Not the tax rate or how that goes up as you make more money. It's the thousands of things that are put in, the mortgage deduction, this and that. That's what makes it complicated.
Dagen McDowell: Maybe the next president can come in and propose a new tax system, tax reform and fixing the entitlement programs at the same time.
Jonathan Hoenig: Maybe you do it under the theory of equal treatment under the law. That somebody shouldn't be punished, or that somebody doesn't have fewer rights just because they make more money.
Wayne Rogers: The only way you are going to get this accomplished is that you are not going to have an elected official to do this. You have to have a dictator. That's the only way it will happen because nobody is going to have the political capital to run this through the congress and you have a whole group of people who are either dishonest, moronic and � I mean, they got elected for reasons that are beyond me.
Dagen McDowell: You need to move to Estonia, then.
Wayne Rogers: You can't cure a problem with people who don't know what the hell they are doing.
==Links==
* Flat tax
* Taxes
* Taxation
category:Planks_from_elsewhere