Written by Walter Hecht   

Some are calling for the abolishment of the IRS and replacing the graduated income tax with a flat tax or some variant of it such as the so-called Fair tax. In my opinion, the graduated, progressive income tax is the fairest tax we have or can have. It taxes income fairly; the more income you have, the more tax you can and should pay. A flat tax or Fair tax is a regressive tax, hitting poor and middle incomes more heavily than the wealthy who are allowed to keep most of their income. I hate paying taxes as much as anyone, but the government requires income and it is best to collect it from those who afford to pay.

Some conservatives want to go even further and abolish the so-called death tax, the inheritance tax. That would be a grave mistake. Our democracy depends on preventing the formation of dynasties, such as in Pakistan, where great wealth is permitted to perpetuate itself and the wealthy dominate politics. Louis Brandeis was an associate justice of the US Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939. He wrote that we could have democracy or great concentrations of wealth, but not both at the same time. I agree with that assessment. Even if we abolished the income tax, the IRS would be necessary to administer whatever tax we replace it with. The US is well on its way to becoming a third world nation of a few rich, many poor and decaying infrastructure. Abolishing the IRS and the graduated income tax would speed that process.