Keith Devens .com

I'm 100% in favor of a 13-15% flat tax, even a 20% flat tax. Current tax paperwork is a waste of billions of hours of prime time and life. Think of all the productive things we can do without it.
Bob

A Flat tax will soon be coming to the floor of congress.
It seems only natural to want things simple, but a Flat tax or national sales tax provides no real tax incentives for investment. Fear then becomes a controlling factor in the market place, fear reduces business investment capital, and the end result is the major loss of JOBS.
For example (verifiable facts):
Japan after W.W.II took our tax code and made it better. To state very simply the government of Japan allowed the targeting of certain industries to become general tax write offs in order to get the capital needed for manufacturing, etc. Those making more money than they needed to survive were allowed to invest (write off) in certain targeted industries and therefore paid little or no tax in return.
Japan's businesses soon became more successful, those that invested by write offs got richer and industry got the capital they needed, and the government took in more tax dollars from their vibrant economy. Government Boards were set up and anyone with a prospectus could present their business ideas in hope their proposal would become a tax write off so they could get the capital they needed to make their proposal a
reality.
If a graduated tax is applied properly by government, adjustments can be made in regards to the flow and direction of capital, write offs can provide capital that can be directed to where it is needed, and away from where it is not needed, the economy then is always in flux, with an ever flowing stock of resources and capital. Therefore the graduated tax is complicated for very good reasons.
History clearly shows the effectiveness of tax incentives (write offs), depreciation, roll over, how adjustments can be made if needed regarding the flow and direction of business investment capital. A graduated tax basically says reinvest back intor your business or pay tax, that incintive stimulates business (as write offs) to roll over profits in the form of purchasing goods, a simple flat would not provide that incentive.
Tax write offs lead to capital investments and produce jobs.
Flat taxes are similar to no taxes (as before and during the Great Depression), in that no taxes (and flat taxes) provide no tangible real tax incentives to invest, thus world events (by the most part fear) becomes a major factor in controlling capital investment.

So, your argument is that we need to have higher taxes so that we have room to cut for tax incentives. That makes a lot of sense. Furthermore, you only talk about industry, yet flat tax proposals, and this post about Russia's system in particular, are about income taxes on individuals.