This week's question for Forbes magazine's America's Most Promising Companies initiative comes from Brett Nelson, Entrepreneurs Editor at Forbes:
How to replace it? I still favor some form of consumption tax.
The fear of Big Government is in the air. What are some of the most deleterious regulations hampering small business today? What would be a better approach?I offer a modest and simple proposal to this question -- repeal a single act passed almost one hundred years ago. It reads as follows:
ARTICLE XVI. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.If we did away with the federal income tax by repealing the 16th amendment to the constitution, we would do away with the Internal Revenue Code as we now know it -- all 70,000 pages of it. No set of regulations hampers small business more than the red tape, cost, and complexity created by our income tax system.
How to replace it? I still favor some form of consumption tax.
I totally agree. This may be blasphemy for most people, but I am shocked that they have every had an income tax. That never made sense to me.
A consumption based tax seems to be much more obvious to me, but then, I'm not in Congress. Inertia kills.