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| Preface | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Complaints about the Current Tax System | |
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| A Different Way to Tax | |
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| Objections to Radical Reform | |
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| Changes in the Context of the Current System | |
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| The Need for Objective Analysis | |
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| What's in This Citizen's Guide | |
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| An Overview of the U.S. Tax System | |
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| How Governments in the United States Get Their Money | |
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| International Comparisons | |
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| Historical Perspectives on the U.S. Tax System | |
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| Personal Income Taxation | |
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| Basic Features of the U.S. Corporate Income Tax | |
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| The Social Security Payroll Tax | |
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| Estate and Gift Taxes | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Fairness | |
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| Vertical Equity and Tax Progressivity | |
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| Horizontal Equity: Equal Treatment of Equals | |
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| Transitional Equity | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Taxes and Economic Prosperity | |
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| Taxes and the Business Cycle | |
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| Budget Deficits and Surpluses | |
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| How Much Should Government Do? | |
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| Tax Cuts to Force Spending Cuts versus Surpluses to Prepare for an Aging Population | |
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| How Taxes Affect Long-Run Economic Prosperity | |
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| A First Cut at the Evidence | |
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| How Taxes Affect Economic Prosperity | |
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| The Specifics | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Simplicity and Enforceability | |
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| How Complicated Is Our Tax System? | |
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| What Makes a Tax System Complicated? | |
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| What Facilitates Enforcement? | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Elements of Fundamental Reform | |
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| A Single Rate | |
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| A Consumption Base | |
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| A Clean Tax Base | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| What Are the Alternatives? | |
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| How the Consumption Tax Plans Work | |
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| At What Rate? | |
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| Simplicity and Enforceability of the Consumption Tax Plans | |
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| Distributional Effects of the Consumption Tax Alternatives | |
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| Economic Effects of Consumption Tax Plans | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| Starting from Here | |
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| Integration: Eliminating the Double Taxation of Corporate Income | |
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| Corporate Welfare and Corporate Tax Shelters | |
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| Inflation Indexing | |
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| Capital Gains | |
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| Savings Incentives in the Income Tax | |
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| The Estate Tax | |
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| Simplifying the Income Tax | |
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| Technological Improvements and the Promise of a Return-Free System | |
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| The President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform | |
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| A Hybrid Approach: Combining a VAT with Income Taxation | |
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| Conclusion | |
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| A Voter's Guide to the Tax Policy Debate | |
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| Tax Cuts versus Tax Reform | |
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| Tax Cuts as a Trojan Horse | |
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| The Devil Is in the Details | |
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| The Tax System Can't Encourage Everything | |
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| Fairness Is a Slippery Concept but an Important One | |
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| Be Skeptical of Claims of Economic Nirvana | |
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| The Tax System Can Be Improved | |
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| A Double Witching Hour | |
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| Notes | |
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| References | |
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| Index | |