Debunking Of That Mythical Flat Tax Conservatives Love So Much

"According to Bush, Estonia has a “flat tax”—and not only that, it’s “transparent and simple.” We’re always surprised to read such things, because no major pol in our own advanced country has ever so much as proposed a flat tax—if by that we mean a tax plan where everyone is required to submit the same percentage of income. (What else does it mean to call a plan “flat?”) In Campaign 96, Steve Forbes made the most famous “flat tax” proposal ever—and everyone agreed to use that misleading name. But uh-oh! Due to the Forbes plan’s large deductions, many families would have paid no taxes at all, and others would have paid as much as 17 percent. It’s hard to know why you’d would want to call that “flat”—except, oh wait! It’s obvious why! The so-called “flat tax”—the “flat tax” that isn’t—is one of those carefully calibrated bits of deception churned out over the past forty years by our pseudo-con think tanks. For some reason, the notion of a “flat tax” sounds good to many people—and that’s especially true when scribes like Stolberg go along with the whole bogus concept. Of course, the real kicker in the Forbes plan was this—the proposal would have drastically lowered taxes on the highest earners. That’s OK, if you want to propose such a thing. But why would you call the Forbes plan “flat?” Unless you want to steer attention away from the real proposal, we’ve never had any idea."

Bob Somerby shows you how big media "journalists" haven't done their jobs on this issue. But then, that is not something new.

Can you guess which families would have paid no tax at all under the Forbes plan?

This is the "holy grail" of the conservative economic crowd, while the fundamentalists are out running around like inebriated chickens with their heads cut off over gays and abortions, they want more than anything to have a "flat" tax on income for the rich which is a code word for....they don't want to pay any tax at all. They are tired of putting their money in offshore bank accounts didn't you know?

You, however, have to pay.