![]() While there may be some benefits to such a tax system, the benefits tend to be overrated. Many people call any tax system with a single statutory tax rate a flat tax. Indeed, they considered the call for an amendment to be a dangerous delaying tactic devised by income tax opponents to derail the popular drive for tax reform. Ardent champions of imposing a new federal income tax argued repeatedly that no amendment was needed. I don't know if that's true in today's legal academy, but it's certainly accurate to say that many legal experts of the 1910s believed an amendment was unnecessary. ![]() "It would be hard to find a competent legal expert who thinks the Supreme Court would find the income tax unconstitutional today even if the Sixteenth Amendment was repealed," he writes. If Congress ever returns to the hard work of actually making good tax policy, then it will need Treasury to help with the hard choices.Ĭontrary to popular belief, Congress was not prohibited from taxing incomes prior to the Sixteenth Amendment.īartlett spends more than a few pages exploring the history of federal taxation, and some of the most interesting are devoted to the income tax amendment ratified in 1913. Real tax reform involves both winners and losers, Bartlett writes. Politicians in both parties haven't needed Treasury's expertise because they've been handing out goodies to almost everyone. He suggests that's partly because tax reform has been eclipsed by tax reduction. The department shaped every major tax reform law of the last 50 years, but in recent years, its influence has been eclipsed by other players in the legislative arena, including lobbyists, according to Bartlett. Treasury was once the 800-pound gorilla of the tax policy process. put Treasury back in charge of tax policy. If the Obama administration wants to have real tax reform, it will need to. But over the past 15 years or so, they've become increasingly peripheral to the legislative process. Once upon a time, tax hearings were more meaningful, Bartlett writes. That's hardly news to Washington insiders, but it still says something important about the legislative process. "Indeed, lobbyists often arrange testimony in order to give their clients a belief that they have done something meaningful to advance their interests," Bartlett writes. But most of the witnesses at your garden-variety tax hearing are there as a courtesy, with politicians trying to make valued supplicants feel like they've been heard. Real experts seem to matter, Bartlett says. Here's a quick selection.Īfter many years of observing the hearing process and having been staff director for a congressional committee, I still have no idea whether congressional testimony has any real impact on legislation.Īdmirable candor here and clearly true. In fact, it's filled with nuggets of analysis that anyone (even a jaded tax professional) will find valuable. At many points, the book seems like an exercise in understatement.īut it's not dull. Anyone familiar with Bartlett's blogging may find him unusually restrained in this volume. And Bartlett does it very well.Ĭonsistent with its educational mission, the book is subdued. In a political system beset by ignorance and misinformation, delivering basic information to interested citizens is a worthy goal. Rather, Bartlett is aiming for the average voter (or at least the average politically engaged voter, a much smaller audience). It's not a book for tax professionals, who will find much of it elementary. He's a fiend for data and dispassionate analysis, but he's not one to pull punches or tolerate fools.īartlett has published a new book, The Benefit and the Burden: Tax Reform - Why We Need It and What It Will Take. ![]() Generally speaking, his opinions are strong but measured. He writes regularly for Tax Notes, the New York Times Economix blog, and The Fiscal Times. Since his expulsion from the right, Bartlett has been a prominent GOP critic, especially when it comes to economic policy. Liberals responded with the kind of warm embrace reserved for apostates from the other side. Bush that earned him immediate exile from the ranks of the Republican faithful. In 2006 he published Impostor, a scathing indictment of President George W. Bruce Bartlett is every liberal's favorite conservative.
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