The Tax Foundation - Tax Reform and Revenue Neutrality: President's Panel Should Avoid the Redistribution of 1986

The Tax Foundation has weighed in on the idea of committing to a revenue neutral Tax reform.

"A good revenue-neutral tax reform plan would involve no deliberate redistribution between the corporate and individual income tax systems. The tax code should raise sufficient revenue to fund government programs, not act as a tool for social engineering or political patronage. Thus, the goal of tax reform is to make the tax code more simple, fair, and economically efficient by eliminating special tax breaks and applying the lowest possible tax rate on the widest possible tax base—in other words “plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest amount of hissing" as Jean Baptiste Colbert wrote some 250 years ago."

Governor Huntsman has elicited no willingness to consider anything but a revenue neutral reform. Why will he not consider a break when there are clear excesses? Despite this I do think that the Task force is going about 'plucking the goose' all wrong.

The Tax Foundation - Tax Reform and Revenue Neutrality: President's Panel Should Avoid the Redistribution of 1986