It’s Tax Day in America, the day when the onslaught of Turbo Tax and H&R Block tax ads reach their fever pitch before the ad buys dwindle away in a desperate attempt to get late filers to pay their taxes.  For months, taxes and tax-related services have carpet-bombed our mental faculties, demanding we make our annual sacrifices to the Imperium.

I did our taxes four times before finally giving up on a potentially large discount (read my tedious, subscriber-only post if you want to know the lurid details).  No software could adequately handle our (admittedly unusual) tax situation, and the federal government rejected our filing three times before I finally [sur]rendered unto Caesar.  I estimate that I spent about twenty hours on our taxes this year, time that could have been spent composing, napping, unpacking, writing, laughing with my wife, researching history, weeding, mowing, showering, cooking—anything more enjoyable and/or productive than convincing Uncle Sam that I did, indeed, teach a bunch of music lessons last year and played several Sundays at a Methodist Church for profit (financial, not spiritual).

I’m not alone.  I’ve seen a number of notes on Substack and YouTube from writers and creators echoing a familiar refrain:  “sorry, no article/video/podcast/interpretative dance tutorial this week, guys:  I’m working on my taxes.”  Sure, the world will keep spinning, and we need some taxes to pay for all those Tomahawk missiles and gender reassignment surgeries for federal inmates—God Forbid we fail to slice up the inmates’ genitalia—but the whole thing is a massive waste of valuable resources.

There’s a reason an entire industry exists around tax preparation—nobody wants to take the time to sit down and go through all that paperwork (except for me and my younger brother, apparently; he ended up handling taxes for not only his family, but for our parents and our elderly, widowed grandmother—God Bless him!).  H&R Block will do your taxes for you!  Even then, you’re paying a few hundred bucks to hand someone else your W-2s and 1099s and what not.  You’re still answering all the same questions as just using the software yourself.  Regardless, you want to spend time not doing taxes, so you shell out the cash.  Some part-time rookie who needs extra cash from January through April looks over your stuff and slaps it together for you, and you get a “refund” (just pre-paid tax back) and feel good.

You shouldn’t!  You gave the federal government a coerced, mandatory, interest-free loan for up to twelve months, and they’re letting you have some of that money back because you maybe loaned them a little too much.  At least split the interest with us!

All of the above is, by now, familiar to every American, to the point that, like most evils (necessary or otherwise), we just grudgingly accept it and try to get through April without the IRS hassling us too much about digging up those shoebox receipts.

My friends, there is a better way.  Or at least a way that would be more convenient for everyone, even if it means Billy Gigeconomy can’t get a few extra bucks doing your taxes for you.  We must end the income tax—or alter it substantially.

Yours portly has two options.  I haven’t run the numbers on these.  My goal is not to replicate current federal income tax revenues.  It’s just to offer up alternatives that are politically popular, fair, and feasible.  What I mean by “fair” is a.) most everyone is paying something into the system and b.) most everyone is paying an equal percentage.  I don’t mean “let’s soak the rich and expand the welfare state.”

Here are our alternatives:

1.) Radically restructure the income tax

Instead of our current, bizarre, graduated income tax system, with its gazillion loopholes and carveouts and exceptions, simplify it dramatically:

• A flat, 5-10% tax on income after the first $25,000 (give or take $5000).
• A 1%  tax on all income earned up to $25,000.
• No exemptions, deductions, etc.—everybody pays something.  If you make $100,000 a year, you’d pay between $4000 (with the 5% level) and $7750 (with the 10% level) per year.  If you made $20,000, you’d just pay $200 in taxes for the year—perfectly reasonable and not life-threatening.  Chances are you’re receiving more than $200 in benefits at that income level anyway.  The point is that you are contributing something—and feel the contribution—even if your actual contribution is outweighed by the benefits you receive from the system.
• Payroll deductions would still occur just to avoid “sticker shock” on tax day (and, sure, we’ll throw the feds a bone).  The $100,000 a year earner would be withholding around $333.33 a month throughout the year at the 5% level.

The benefit of this system is simplicity.  It vastly reduces the difficulty and time involved in filing taxes.  The downside is that you still have to file taxes, although the risk of auditing is virtually zero, as the only auditable event would be failing to file taxes in the first place, or falsifying a W-2.

2.) Replace the income tax with a flat national sales tax

• Completely dismantle the income tax; amend the Constitution if necessary to repeal the 16th Amendment entirely so Congress won’t be tempted to tax our income and our purchases (they will).
• Institute a flat national sales tax of 10% on all finished goods; tax food and medicine at either 1% or 0% (most States have a 1%-2% sales tax on groceries that is lower than the normal State sales tax).

The benefit of this system is simplicity and fairness.  It taxes consumption, not work.  Taxes, being an inherent price increase, do what all price increases do—they disincentivize what is being taxed.  Taxing income is kind of stupid when you consider it in this light:  why do we want to create a disincentive to work?  The decriminalization of weed has given us enough of a disincentive already; we don’t need our tax code exacerbating the problem.

Instead, we disincentivize spending/consumption.  Frankly, we need to discourage these things.  Americans spend far too much money—and don’t save enough (nuking the income tax would also end the taxation of savings interest, which is one of the most corrosive elements of the tax code).  Yes, prices will go up—by 10%.  If you live in a high sales tax State, you’re going to pay quite a bit more for goods.  But you have far more control over what you buy, not how much you earn.

Additionally, prices are already going up.  We might as well lean into inflation to gain a beneficial outcome.

These are broad, sweeping proposals.  I don’t pretend that either of them are politically viable.  The entrenched tax industry would have all sorts of sob stories about the tens of thousands of workers they’d have to layoff.  Boo-hoo—being leeches leeching off the biggest leech doesn’t endear me to you your plight, H&R Block.  The federal government is not going to want to kneecap its revenue—and its ability to use the tax code as a way to dole out political favors to special interest groups.

But these proposals would likely prove politically popular.  Yes, people would complain about higher prices.  Hey—learn some financial restraint.  Uncle Sam sure isn’t!  Without an income tax, too, you’d be pocketing far more of your income.  You’d also avoid the crazy guessing game each year:  “Did I withhold enough?  Did I do the math perfectly on all of my potential deductions that I won’t get hit with a huge bill?”  No one but the most dedicated planner could pull it off.

We’ve sacrificed so much in the name of convenience—our privacy, our will to be great, our morality.  Why can’t we sacrifice the tax code on the same altar?  If we’re embracing pagan deities, can we have Convenience devour Income Tax like Saturn devouring his young?