Last week, Herman Cain "retired" - or at least withdrew his bid for the Republican nomination for presidency.
Amen... and amen to his 9-9-9 tax plan either.
In case you missed it, Herman's tax plan, in short, proposed a 9% tax rate on individuals, 9% on corporations, and 9% sales tax.
That always seems so simple....
But alas.... as Michele Bachmann points out in the 999 upside down, the devil is in the details...
Certainly most people would embrace the simplicity of paying 9% of their income. If you just earn a salary from an employer - your "income" is pretty easy to determine (assuming you give decide whether the exemption for employer-provided health insurance should remain in place, and if you still get to contribute to a 401(k)). But what if you are self-employed, and you have expenses related to your income? Do you just tax 9% of your revenue? Because if you always deductions for expenses - you open up a hornet's nest of complexity - starting off with depreciation, and when an item is deductible (when paid or when used up). Those two issues alone consume hundreds of pages of IRS laws and rules.
I guess the one lesson that can be learned from this is as follows. IF the tax system was so easy to fix, someone (or some group of people) would have figured it out a looooog time ago.
