[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 59 (Tuesday, April 15, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H2325]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         COMPLEXITY OF TAX CODE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, you know, it is said that nothing in the 
world is certain except death and taxes. And I'll tell you, being a 
physician in my former life, that sometimes even death is a little less 
complicated than our tax system.
  The complexity of the tax code is a consequence of countless 
deductions and exemptions that are aimed not at collecting revenue, but 
steering a social agenda. And the result is a Federal law that is 
fraught with opportunities for avoiding taxes and full of loopholes to 
be exploited, all at the expense of fellow Americans.
  My criticizing the tax code is as American as apple pie and baseball, 
and for good reason, because every year Americans spend billions of 
hours and billions of dollars, and that's not counting the billions of 
hours that we spend complaining about the tax code. Time is money, and 
time should be spent growing the economy and creating jobs.
  There is a strong prescription for real change in our tax code. We 
caught a glimpse of it when Ronald Reagan cut the tax code in half back 
in 1986. As a result of that reform, the economy grew, revenues 
increased, and jobs were created. The prescription is pretty simple: 
Flatten the tax, broaden the base, and shift the burden away from 
families and small businesses.
  And we do have a practical and effective blueprint, it's called the 
flat tax. Back in 1981, Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka proposed a 
radically simple structure that would transform the Internal Revenue 
Service and our economy by creating a single tax rate for all 
Americans. Today, several States have implemented a single rate tax 
structure for their State income tax, and from Utah to Massachusetts 
citizens are realizing the benefit.
  In Colorado, a single rate tax generated so much income that it was 
reduced 10 years after its implementation. In Indiana, the economy 
boomed after a single rate went into effect in 2003, and since that 
time the corporate income tax receipts have grown by 250 percent.
  Now, several people in Congress are working on the problem. I have a 
bill, H.R. 1040, which is a voluntary flat tax. A companion bill was 
introduced by the senior Senator from Tennessee just this past week. We 
have bills from David Dreier, the gentleman from California, Paul Ryan 
from Wisconsin, all trying to accomplish the same goal, and it is so 
simple. You have a single rate, you have a single piece of paper. You 
put in your name, just a little bit of identification data, write in 
your income, there's a line for personal exemptions, calculate your 
deductions from personal exemptions and calculate your taxable income, 
multiply it by a flat rate, subtract the taxes already withheld, and 
you're done. And what did that take? Not even 30 seconds. No more 
expensive tax attorney bills, no more hours of stressful research, no 
more headaches. It is much less costly, saving the taxpayers more than 
$100 billion per year. And it would increase tax compliance. The 
result: Increase in personal savings, and there is a stimulus package 
that would have an immediate effect on our American economy.
  Recent polling by a group called American Solutions shows that over 
80 percent of Americans favor an optional one-page tax return form with 
a single rate. Now, we hear a lot of talk about change this year. You 
practically cannot turn on the television without some political 
commercial talking about change. Well, let's consider how change could 
improve the most complicated of institutions, the Internal Revenue 
Service. And more importantly, consider how that change could deliver 
prosperity and return time, the precious commodity of time, to the 
American taxpayer. Now, that's a stimulus package worthy of everyone's 
vote.

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