Tax Reform

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Bill Thomas, Republican of California, recently pledged to use his last year as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to promote tax reform. If the past is any guide, he and his conservative allies will advance a "flat tax," and progressives will attack the idea as unfair. The critics will be right, but this year, they should offer reform plans of their own. In addressing tax reform, Mr. Thomas will be stepping into the vacuum created by President Bush's abandonment of his own tax plan.

Just as World War I was "the war to end all wars," the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was the tax law to end tax laws. Fat chance that was going to happen. The biggest tax change since the income tax was created in 1913, the 1986 law had bipartisan support and was considered an important legacy of President Ronald Reagan. It simplified taxes, cut tax rates for individuals and corporations, required a minimum tax for the wealthy and did away with loopholes that had veered out of control. But having a tax code within reach of politicians is like ice cream guarded by a 3-year-old child: It's just too tempting to leave alone.

NO PARADES. No flags flying. No patriotic speeches. No Yankee Doodling. This is Tax Day, the day 118 million Americans are due to turn over $157 billion to the nice folks at the Internal Revenue Service. It is the moment in the year when citizen-involvement in government is at its peak.Instead of welcoming this occasion, legions of citizens curse the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified on Feb. 25, 1913. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Archer, has declared war on the amendment's graduated income tax, saying it should be "torn out by its roots."

People sitting comfortably at home in Baltimore, paying their mortgages monthly, may feel no connection to the subprime mortgage crisis. But it just cost them a cut in the property tax rate. Faced with budget shortfalls, Mayor Sheila Dixon has decided against shaving 2 cents off the rate of $2.268 per $100 of assessed value as part of the five-year plan to lower the rate by 10 cents. But the mayor made the wrong choice: She should have withheld cost-of-living raises for city workers and delivered some tax relief.

There is no way to sugarcoat the April 15 pill.Americans will be paying about $560 billion in 1990 income taxes to the Treasury in this year's painful ritual culminating at midnight tomorrow.When taxpayers calculate their tax bite a year from now, the income tax bill is expected to be up a huge $27 billion. It will reflect the first big installment on the largest revenue package ever passed by Congress, raising an additional $164 billion over five years.Taxpayers on the average worked almost until the end of March just to earn enough to pay this year's federal income and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Foundation.

No one called it dead on arrival. But even supporters of a landmark proposal to restructure Maryland's tax system were pessimistic about its recommendations to increase and expand the sales tax, raise taxes on higher incomes and redistribute millions of dollars to Baltimore and poor, rural counties."

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Plenty of politicians are suddenly itching to overhaul the Internal Revenue Service. But Dan Quayle was for tax reform before tax reform was cool, as he is reminding audiences around the country these days.Over pork barbecue, blackberry cobbler and pitchers of iced tea, he tells the Birmingham Rotary Club about the modified flat tax he proposed in the 1980s. Simplicity, Efficiency, Lower rates and Fairness, it was called. SELF, for short."S-E-L-F," Quayle says, pronouncing each letter carefully.

Earlier this month, the president's jobs bill failed in the Senate. Now the White House intends to break up the bill and gin up sufficient Republican support to pass key pieces. "We will now work with Senator Reid to make sure that the individual proposals in this jobs bill get a vote as soon as possible," said President Barack Obama in a statement released shortly after the Senate vote. This piecemeal approach might be politically expedient, but the provisions the White House is pushing are still a whiff policywise.

WASHINGTON -- Maybe the fiscal advisers of the Almighty should be credited with the idea. The notion of a flat tax, which according to some polls has made Steve Forbes the hot Republican candidate in the early stages of this year's presidential elections, is not new.If Mr. Forbes, who is the front-running Republican candidate according to some polls, had set the rate of his proposal at 10 percent, he could have called it the tithe -- the Church's flat tax...