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Public Offers Tax Reform Ideas to Obama Commission

1 min readBy: Joseph Bishop-Henchman

President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) has a taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. reform subcommittee that requested comments and ideas from the public for tax reform. You can view the 383 submitted comments here.

Supporters of the FairTax proposal, which would replace much of the federal tax system with a national sales taxA sales tax is levied on retail sales of goods and services and, ideally, should apply to all final consumption with few exemptions. Many governments exempt goods like groceries; base broadening, such as including groceries, could keep rates lower. A sales tax should exempt business-to-business transactions which, when taxed, cause tax pyramiding. , were out in force: nearly 40% of the comments advocated that reform. Flat taxAn income tax is referred to as a “flat tax” when all taxable income is subject to the same tax rate, regardless of income level or assets. supporters made up another 10% or so. Many of the other comments were not so much about tax reform ideas, but asking that taxes be reduced for their particular situations: graduate student stipends, makers of vegetable oil from algae, credit card interest, all student loan interest, health expenses, and so forth. One person recommended a 100% tax on all income over $100,000.

Check out the comments here.

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