I think strongly that some of the very original thoughts on collecting of taxes be brought back to the light of day. By this I mean the fact that our tax laws are so unreadable that it takes an army of attorneys to sort through it and even then finding disagreement amongst themselves.
The principal is that everyone pays their fair share of taxes to the government. All of us can agree at this point I am reasonably sure. Our government sets the equality rules at this point and here is where most all controversy starts. They use an out dated set of numbers to set the taxes each of us pay. In all fact, they could actually increase all of the government coffers by a vast multitude of funding by making the environment tax friendly and totally fair by imposing some very simple tax collection practices.
First, start by eliminating all existing tax laws standing and install a new set of equality rules with total lifting of all upper limits on all income with no exceptions. At the same time lift the upper limits on the FICA that stops being collected at a certain level and continue collecting as in any other tax collection. These two things alone would reap the government conservatively several millions of dollars.
Second, use the one principal we all know and that is fairness. For individual and household incomes earning $15,000.00 and above pay on a three step process with the very lowest rates on the $15,000.01 through $30,000.00 at 7% of gross income. Next group from $30,000.01 through $45,000.00 pay a rate of 12% and the last group with earnings of $45,000.01 and above with no cap be 17%. Final part of this equality and fairness is that business be divided into two groups such as "Family buisness", sole propietorship etc with earnings of less than $3,000,000.00 pay a flat rate of 19%, while the group(s) of businesses with annual gross income greater than $3,000,000.01 pay a rate of 25%. This again can only happen if absolutely no exceptions take place.
These two steps described above would put us back to the place where the USA would be at its most powerful. This could be aceived by applying this process to the actual numbers and see how much revenue this would generate and also provide all the funding necessary to improve and multiply as well as expand all forms of existing and yet to be discovered new technologies.
Chuck S