Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna

I'd be onboard for the Flat Tax. I'm less enamored with the Fair Tax. Instead of that, the idea I like best is the Value-Added Tax (VAT). That's the tax system most common in Europe. It's simply a tax levied at every level of the economy based on the value added at the time of sale of goods. Suppliers of raw materials would collect a tax from, say a distributor of those materials. The distributor would collect a tax when the material was sold to the manufacturer. The manufacturer would collect a tax when he sold his manufactured item to a wholesaler. The wholesaler to the retail re-seller, then again when it was sold to the consumer. The tax rate itself is quite small, but in total enough to pay for the desired level of government-provided services. Read more about it at...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added_tax

But the problem with any single overall scheme of taxation is how do the tax revenues get split up between the various levels of government providing services...township, town, county, state, school district, fire district, park district, federal, etc. Wow! What a negotiation that might be.