Rick Perry’s Not-Really-All-That-Flat Tax

The 20 percent flat tax proposal Rick Perry unveiled on Oct. 25 scratches the Republican itch for a cleaner Internal Revenue Code stripped of special breaks, tiered rates, and endless complexity. It will also do something else, which Perry doesn’t highlight—deliver huge tax cuts to the rich and raise less revenue overall, making it much harder to achieve the already difficult task of balancing the federal budget.

Perry’s plan is a flashback to the signature issue of Steve Forbes, the wealthy magazine publisher who campaigned for President in 1996 and 2000. Perry has taken on Forbes as an adviser and even adopted his favorite trope, the notion that flat taxes are so simple they can be filed on a postcard. Forbes’s drive faltered after opponents criticized his 17 percent tax for shifting the burden to middle-income families and away from people like Forbes himself.