Flat Taxes

São muitos os actuais defensores da chamada Taxa de Imposto Único, em vigor em grande parte de países da Europa de Leste. Encontrei um artigo, no Economist que explica muito bem a organização do sistema, e todos os benefícios que se podem obter da adesão a esta medida:

A flat tax on personal incomes combines a threshold (that is, an exempt amount) with a single rate of tax on all income above it. The progressivity of such a system can be varied within wide limits using just these two variables. Under systems such as America's, or those operating in most of western Europe, the incentives for the rich to avoid tax (legally or otherwise) are enormous; and the opportunities to do so, which arise from the very complexity of the codes, are commensurately large. So it is unsurprising to discover, as experience suggests, that the rich usually pay about as much tax under a flat-tax regime as they do under an orthodox code.

So much for the two main objections. What then are the advantages of being very simple-minded when it comes to tax? Simplicity of course is a boon in its own right. The costs merely of administering a conventionally clotted tax system are outrageous. Estimates for the United States, whose tax regime, despite the best efforts of Congress, is by no means the world's most burdensome, put the costs of compliance, administration and enforcement between 10% and 20% of revenue collected. (That sum, by the way, is equivalent to between one-quarter and one-half of the government's budget deficit.)

(...)

Though it is impossible to be precise, that direct burden is almost certainly as nothing compared with the broader economic costs caused by the government's interfering so pervasively in the allocation of resources.

As flat taxes, foram a principal novidade da campanha eleitoral de Angela Merkel a nível financeiro. Se a coligação com o SPD irá comprometer a implementação desta taxa, é algo que temos de esperar para saber.